Each academic year, real estate researchers or faculty from other universities are invited to participate in the research program of the Center. This normally includes being in-residence at the Ziman Center. The Center will host nine visiting scholars during academic year 2013-2014: Xudong An, Assistant Professor of Finance and the Endowed Professor of Real Estate at San Diego State University (SDSU); John Cotter, Associate Professor in Finance at University College Dublin; Yongheng Deng, Director of the Institute of Real Estate Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Professor of Real Estate at the School of Design and Environment, and Professor of Finance at the NUS Business School; Canfei He, Associate Dean and Professor at the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, and Deputy Director of Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy; J. Vernon Henderson, Eastman Professor of Political Economy and Professor of Economics and Urban Studies at Brown University; Chandler Lutz, Assistant Professor of Finance and Macroeconometrics, Copenhagen Business School; Stephen D. Oliner, Economic Consultant and Former Assistant Director of Research for the Federal Reserve Board; Ryan K. Vaughn, Ph.D., Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles; and Siqi Zheng, Associate Professor and the Executive Director of the Hang Lung Center for Real Estate at Tsinghua University, China.
Xudong An
Xudong An is an Assistant Professor of Finance and the Endowed Professor of Real Estate at San Diego State University (SDSU).
Dr. An's research mainly focuses on mortgage default risk, although he has wide interests in real estate finance, risk management, structured finance, and housing economics. He has developed an expertise in using econometric models to analyze, predict and price default risk. Examples of his research topics include: risk-based pricing in the mortgage market, model stability and the subprime mortgage crisis, structural models for commercial mortgage default risk, and CMBS pricing. Xudong also conducts research on securitization, mortgage lending, real estate valuation, house price and housing indicators, and corporate bankruptcy. He publishes in such academic journals as the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and Real Estate Economics. Dr. An is a winner of the Homer Hoyt Post Doctoral Award. He has received research grants from the Real Estate Research Institute (RERI), the NUS Risk Management Institute (RMI), and SDSU.
Professor An teaches real estate finance, real estate investment, and real estate principles classes at SDSU. He also taught microeconomics and real estate finance at the University of Southern California (USC), where he obtained his Ph.D. under the supervision of Yongheng Deng, Raphael Bostic, Stuart Gabriel, Fernando Zapatero and Chris Jones. Prior to coming to the United States, he received his bachelor's and master's degrees in China and worked for a real estate consulting firm.
John Cotter
Professor John Cotter is Associate Professor in Finance and Director of the Centre for Financial Markets at the Michael Smurfit School of Business, University College Dublin.
John's research, teaching and consultancy interests are in the areas of Volatility Modeling and Measuring, Risk Management and Asset Pricing with applications in equity, currency, derivative and real estate markets. He has published many technical and industry papers in these areas including the Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Futures Markets, and Economic Enquiry. His research in the area of Real Estate has been published in journals such as Real Estate Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics and the Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management.
Professor Cotter is currently Associate Editor of the Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money and the European Journal of Finance. He has consulted for many organizations including Fortune 500 companies, and Government bodies.
Professor Cotter earned his PhD from Queen's University. John has had secondment visits to UCLA, London School of Economics and ESSEC Business School. He was previously Director of the Executive MBA at the Michael Smurfit School of Business. John was awarded a University College Dublin Outstanding Educator Teaching Award in 2003.
Professor Cotter has recently completed research that examined volatility and its properties in real estate investment markets. At the Ziman Center, John is continuing to collaborate with UCLA faculty on three real estate projects: Risk and house price returns, Risk measurement for equity REITs; and Cross-sectional commercial real estate risk.
Yongheng Deng 
Professor Yongheng Deng is Director of the Institute of Real Estate Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Professor of Real Estate at the School of Design and Environment, and Professor of Finance at the NUS Business School. He is currently a council member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Urban and Real Estate Development, and a Special Advisor to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Representative Office for Asia and the Pacific. He has also served as a member of Singapore Economic Strategy Committee sub Committee on Land, and is a member of the NUS Global Asia Institute Steering Committee. He is a Fellow of Homer Hoyt Institute for Advanced Real Estate Studies, and Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS). Prior to joining NUS, he was a tenured professor at the University of Southern California. He has also served as an Economist and Expert in the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight in the U.S. Federal Government in mid 90's.
Professor Deng's research pertains to a wide variety of issues in real estate finance and urban economic policy, including property market pricing and risk analysis with a focus on China and Asia, asset pricing of mortgage-backed securities and derivatives, structured finance and security design in RMBS and CMBS markets, credit risks analysis of CMBS and CDO markets, econometric analysis of competing risks of mortgage prepayment and default with unobserved heterogeneity, policy analysis regarding enhancing mortgage credit availability among underserved and higher credit-risk populations, as well as green-building, eco-environment, institution and governance of property and real estate finance market.
Professor Deng holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, and PostDoc in Real Estate Finance from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Canfei He
Canfei He is a full professor in the College of Urban and Environmental Science at the Peking University (PKU). He has served as the associate dean of the college and also the deputy director of Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy since 2007. He is the vice secretary-general of the Chinese Geography Society (CGS). His research interests include industrial agglomeration, multinational corporations, environment and energy. Dr. He has worked with the World Bank on industrial agglomeration and industrial restructuring in China. He has published in top English journals including Annals of American Association of Geographers, Regional Studies，Urban Studies, Papers in Regional Science，Annals of Regional Sciences, Eurasian Geography and Economics，International Migration Review，China & World Economy，Post Communist Economies, GeoJournal, Chinese Geographical Science, and Geographische Rundschau. He published five Chinese books on issues of industrial agglomeration and geography of multinational corporations in China. Dr. He is the associate editor of World Regional Geography, and on the editorial board of Eurasian Geography and Economics and three Chinese journals. He has served as an anonymous reviewer for more than 20 international English journals.
Professor He earned his Ph.D degree in geography from Arizona State University in 2001. He was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Memphis during 2001-2003. He was the recipient of Harry and Shirley Bailey Award (Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, 2000), the Distinguished Young Scholar in Geography (China Geography Society, 2007) and was awarded as the Best Paper in Regional Science (Regional Science Association of China,2011). His research projects are granted the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Beijing Municipal Government. Dr. He teaches Urban Economics, Economic Geography and Advanced Research Methods in Economic Geography at Peking University and the Shenzhen Graduate School of Peking University.
J. Vernon Henderson 
J. Vernon Henderson is the Eastman Professor of Political Economy and Professor of Economics and Urban Studies at Brown University, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has been at Brown since 1974.
Professor Henderson earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and his B.A. from the University of British Columbia. He has conducted research on aspects of urbanization and local government finance and regulation in the USA, Brazil, Canada, India, China, Korea and Indonesia. Professor Henderson is currently doing research on systems of cities, industrial location, urban productivity, environmental regulation, and development of urban sub-centers, as well as tax and public service competition among cities.
Chandler Lutz
Chandler Lutz is an assistant Professor at the Copenhagen Business school in Copenhagen, Denmark. He combines theory, econometrics, and empirical techniques to study behavioral finance and macroeconomics. His research interests also include Bayesian econometrics and time series forecasting.
Chandler has received numerous grants and awards related to his research and teaching. Before joining the economics department at CBS, Chandler earned a PhD from The University of California, Riverside and a bachelors of science degree in mathematics and economics at the University of Redlands. At Redlands Chandler played four years of collegiate tennis. He also studied abroad and played tennis at University College London (UCL). Chandler was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. In addition to economics, Chandler enjoys computer programming, tennis, basketball, traveling and the outdoors.
Stephen D. Oliner
Dr. Stephen Oliner, UCLA Ziman Center 2012-2013 Senior Research Fellow, currently works as an economic consultant after having completed a distinguished career at the Federal Reserve Board earlier this year.
During the first half of his career at the Fed, Steve analyzed macroeconomic developments in the U.S. economy, with a focus on business capital spending and commercial real estate. For the second half of his career, Steve's work concentrated on U.S. financial markets, corporate finance, and household finance, but he retained responsibilities in his prior areas of expertise.
Dr. Oliner's research has covered a variety of topics, including work on business investment spending, productivity growth, information technology, monetary policy, financial markets, and real estate issues. He has compiled a substantial publication record, including articles in the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Inquiry, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking.
Steve's current research focuses squarely on real estate topics. One paper uses data on land transactions to create land price indexes for a large number of cities in the United States; the indexes document that land prices are extremely volatile relative to the prices for other types of real estate. Another paper analyzes the factors that affect the length of the planning period for commercial construction projects using national data on project timelines; preliminary results indicate that the planning periods are substantial and have become longer over time.
Dr. Oliner earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin.
Ryan K. Vaughn
Ryan K. Vaughn specializes in Urban and Environmental Economics. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from UCLA in 2010. Since then, he has worked in the private sector and maintained a position as a visiting scholar at the Ziman Center for Real Estate at the UCLA Anderson School. Dr. Vaughn's research is broadly on the interaction between individual choice and the spatial environment of that choice. He has approached this topic publishing studies in the urban economic, real estate finance, environmental economics, and coastal management literatures.
Siqi Zheng
Siqi Zheng is an Associate Professor and the Executive Director of the Hang Lung Center for Real Estate at Tsinghua University, China.
Dr. Siqi Zheng's field of specialization is urban economics and housing market. Her research interests include urban spatial structure, green cities, housing supply and demand, housing price dynamics, and low-income housing policies. Examples of her research topics include: location choices of households and firms, land use and transportation, within- and cross-city compensating differentials of quality of life in real estate prices, housing supply elasticity, and rural-migrants' housing policies in China. She published in such journals as Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of Urban Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. She also published numerous papers and two books in Chinese. She is on the editorial board of Journal of Housing Economics. Dr. Zheng has completed or been undertaking research projects granted or entrusted by National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and National Statistics Bureau of China, etc.
Dr. Zheng is the Research Fellow at the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy; the Research Fellow at the Center for Industrial Development and Environment Governance, Tsinghua University. She is the vice Secretary-General of the Global Chinese Real Estate Congress. Dr. Zheng is a winner of the Homer Hoyt Post Doctoral Award. She also won the Best Paper Award from the American Real Estate Society.
Dr. Zheng teaches Regional and Urban Economics, Real Estate Price Fundamentals and Appraisal Techniques in Tsinghua University. Dr. Zheng holds a Ph.D. in Real Estate and Housing Economics of Tsinghua University, and PostDoc in Urban Economics from the GSD of Harvard University.
