Portrait of Zirui Wang, a Finance Ph.D. student at UT Austin, pictured in November 2023. He is wearing a white striped shirt and glasses, and has a focused, confident expression. Zirui has black hair and is looking directly at the camera.

Zirui Wang

PhD Student in Finance at UT Austin

Welcome to my website! I am a Finance Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business. My research interests include Forensic Finance, Fintech, Real Estate, and Climate Finance.

Before coming to UT Austin, I earned a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, San Diego.

Research

The Rise in Insurance Costs for Commercial Properties: Causes, Effects on Rents, and the Role of Owners

with Minjoo Kim and Prateek Mahajan

Using a large and novel set of property-level operating statements for commercial properties, we examine the causes of the increase in insurance costs, the effects of this increase on rents and profits, and how property owners are managing this increase. First, we document a large and persistent year-over-year increase in insurance costs across nearly all regions of the US during the last decade. 95% of individuals live in counties where the increase in commercial insurance costs is at least double the increase in homeowners insurance costs, which is due in part to regulatory frictions in the homeowners insurance market. Second, we provide evidence of three main drivers of the rise in insurance costs: heightened pricing of local risk, a large increase in reinsurance costs, and cross-subsidization across states. Third, we find that 67% of the rise in insurance costs is passed through to rents on average; however, the passthrough to rent is concave and decreasing over time. Finally, we examine the role of property owners and find that 1) larger owners are able to maintain lower insurance costs, 2) the effects of owner size on insurance costs are larger in high-risk areas, and 3) owners with lower average portfolio risk have lower insurance costs even holding the risk of a given property fixed. Our findings suggest that insurance pricing for commercial properties is driven by both local risk factors and broader systematic risk exposure, with risks extending beyond individual properties through insurers and property owners' portfolios.

Presentations: University of Texas at San Antonio, Seminar (presented by coauthor); 2025 Baruch-JFQA Climate Finance and Sustainability Conference, PhD Poster Session (won Best Poster Award); University of Texas at Austin, PhD Seminar

A heat map of the percentage change in insurance costs between 2022 and 2023.

A heat map of the percentage change in insurance costs between 2022 and 2023.

This figure presents scatterplots of the annual average percentage change in commercial insurance costs versus homeowner insurance costs for three consecutive yearly intervals.

This figure presents scatterplots of the annual average percentage change in commercial insurance costs versus homeowner insurance costs for three consecutive yearly intervals.

This figure shows the effects of a 5 ppt increase in reinsurance costs across varying levels of risk score or expected annual losses (horizontal axis) given different levels of reinsurance exposure (different colored lines) on percentage change in in

This figure shows the effects of a 5 ppt increase in reinsurance costs across varying levels of risk score or expected annual losses (horizontal axis) given different levels of reinsurance exposure (different colored lines) on percentage change in insurance costs.

This figure examines the impact of rising insurance costs on rents and net operating income (NOI) for properties. It presents binscatter plots showing the relationship between insurance cost per unit and two outcomes: the left subpanel plots rents pe

This figure examines the impact of rising insurance costs on rents and net operating income (NOI) for properties. It presents binscatter plots showing the relationship between insurance cost per unit and two outcomes: the left subpanel plots rents per unit, and the right subpanel plots NOI per unit.

This figure examines how owner size impacts insurance costs and how this relationship varies across regions with different risk score. It includes property fixed effects and CBSA × year fixed effects.

This figure examines how owner size impacts insurance costs and how this relationship varies across regions with different risk score. It includes property fixed effects and CBSA × year fixed effects.

This figure examines how the relationship between the effect of a property’s risk score (horizontal axis) on insurance costs across different levels of average risk of its owner’s portfolio (different colored lines) varies across different owner size

This figure examines how the relationship between the effect of a property’s risk score (horizontal axis) on insurance costs across different levels of average risk of its owner’s portfolio (different colored lines) varies across different owner sizes. The left (right) subpanel shows the case when the property owner has 1,000 (50,000) units across the entire nation. Owner × year fixed effects are included in the regression.

Teaching

Instructor

  • FIN 367: Investment Management (Undergraduate)
    Summer 2024, UT Austin

Teaching Assistant

Select student comments (as TA):

  • "Zirui did great throughout the semester, definitely one of my top 5 TAs during my college career."

  • "Zirui was definitely the most organized/ helpful amongst all of the TAs."

  • "He was always available for questions and responded to my emails promptly."

  • "I just wanted to say thank you SO much for the extra time and help you poured into me these past few weeks. It really help me understand the material and prepare as best I could for the final. I appreciate your patience, your composure, and your understanding!"

  • "I appreciate all your efforts and hard work in helping us students learn more while preparing for exams. Your office hours for Exams 2 and 3 were a catalyst in understanding my mistakes and learning from them for the Final. I hope you can continue to be a TA and continue helping to foster learning in finance for students."

  • "I really appreciate Zirui working to put together the exam reviews, even if it was difficult to wrangle the students together. Those really helped especially when he walked through the problems step by step and tried to go deeper by connecting conceptual questions to calculations."

  • "Zirui and I debated some of my free–response answers on the first two exams. Although we sometimes had differing opinions, he was always receptive to what I was saying and looked to explain his perspective in the best way possible."

  • "really appreciated his help over email and office hours, even though he was super busy behind the scenes organizing the course. also really enjoyed his presentation of his own research!"