Prof. Can Gao tells us more about his youth, studies, interests and current research in the interview below.

Where did you grow up?
Before eighteen, I was raised in the city of Yangzhou in China. It is a `small’ historical city (4.5 million population) in the southeast with about 2500 years history with many stories. It seems Marco Polo had been the governor there for three years. 
 

What were your hobbies as a child? 
Football and Violin.
 

Where did you go to university?
I went to Beijing for my undergraduate study. I did my bachelor in pure and applied mathematics at China Agricultural University.
 

Where did you do your PhDs? 
I came to EPFL to study my math Ph.D., and out of interest, I also did a master’s degree in theoretical physics at Imperial College London while I was in the final year of the math Ph.D.. After that, I moved to London and worked part-time in the financial industry while pursuing my second Ph.D. degree in Finance at Imperial College Business School.
 

Who were your PhD advisors?
My supervisors of the Finance Ph.D. are Prof. Franklin Allen and Prof. Marcin Kacperczyk. Franklin is one of the most cited scholars in Finance, and Marcin is a role model of what a great scholar should be like. 
 

Why a second PhD?
Why not? :) It is a change in personal taste. In mathematics, most of the problems are well-defined and the challenge is to find the way to solve them. While in finance, the difficult part is usually to find the correct question to ask. The contrast of the inductive and deductive ways of thinking in those two fields also inspired me a lot in research and in life. 

Any anecdote or memory from your time as PhD?
I think the first few years when I started my Ph.D. with no background in finance were probably the hardest for me. I’m glad I made it eventually with the support of faculty and my colleagues at Imperial College.
 

What is your main research focus?
I like everything about and related to asset pricing, especially at its intersection with macroeconomics and international finance. 
 

What research are you working on right now that you are really excited about and why?
I’m currently working on cointegrating relationships among fiscal variables and output and using them to introduce a new measure of the government’s fiscal position. Using US and UK data, myself and my collaborators from Harvard and LSE find that a deterioration in the fiscal position forecasts a decline in government spending over the long run. It does not forecast increases in tax revenue; nor does it forecast low returns for bondholders. I find the result exciting because it contrasts with the conclusion people have from equity pricing: valuation ratio adjustment comes mainly from returns rather than `cash-flows’.
 

What attracted you to Switzerland, UNISG and SFI?
The school of finance at UNISG has a young and entrepreneurial environment, and the fact that it is a SFI member makes it even more attractive. And on a personal note, half of my family is Swiss, and we wanted to relocate back to Switzerland. So, the opportunity at UNISG was, for me, the right place at the right time. 
 

What languages do you speak?
English, Mandarin, some Chinese dialogues (spoken by only a few million people!), a bit of French a tiny bit of Bernese German, and Japanese.
 

Tell us something exciting that happened to you in the last five-ten years?
All birthday wishes came true (maybe I should dream bigger).
 

What do you do in your spare time?
Nowadays I try to spend any spare time with my family.
 

What is your favorite holiday destination?
In the recent years, it is Thun --- IYKYK :). I couldn’t find a better place after becoming a father.
 

What is your favorite movie?
The Legend of 1900.