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PhD candidate Usama Malik earned his bachelor’s degree from the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences in Pakistan and his master’s degree from Lund University in Sweden. During his master’s program, he was struck by the disconnect between real-world behavior and the foundational assumptions underlying most financial theories.

“Most financial models assume that investors always act rationally and that extreme events, such as market crashes, are rare. In reality, however, investors’ decisions are often shaped by behavioral tendencies, and extreme events occur far more frequently than these theories allow,” says Malik.

This realization became the driving force behind his research ambitions.

Usama’s primary research interests lie in theoretical and empirical asset pricing — particularly behavioral asset pricing and the effects of non-normal return distributions on investment decisions. His current work investigates how cognitive biases such as the gambler’s fallacy and the hot-hand fallacy influence stock prices.

“I’ve developed the theoretical model for my paper and completed an initial empirical analysis,” says Malik. “My model demonstrates that when some investors hold fallacious beliefs, a firm’s idiosyncratic risk — traditionally thought to depress its share price — can actually drive the price higher. My preliminary empirical results support this prediction.”

Usama decided to pursue his PhD at the ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ because its faculty offered the mentorship he sought.

“The ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ School of Business’s collaborative environment and its faculty’s commitment to combining theory and empirics make it the ideal place to receive the mentorship needed to develop and test new ideas,” says Malik.

Looking ahead, Usama intends to extend his research into new behavioral dimensions — modeling how irrational beliefs and cultural factors jointly drive stock prices — and to test these models across a variety of global markets. He also plans to explore how skewed return distributions and labor income influence investment decisions and asset prices, adding further depth to existing theories. Through this work, he aims to bridge the gap between elegant pricing models and the complex realities of human-driven financial markets.

joined the ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ School of Business in 2021 as a PhD student in finance and is co-supervised by associate professors and .