Jeff Cai

Patricia and George Scharpf Family Assistant Professor in Real Estate

IT, Analytics, and Operations

Biography

Jeff Cai is the Patricia and George Scharpf Family Assistant Professor in Real Estate in the IT, Analytics, and Operations Department (ITAO). Jeff received his PhD in Statistics and Data Science from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His research lies in the intersection of statistical learning and data-driven decision-making, with applications to revenue management, corporate governance, healthcare, and urban studies. A significant thrust of his research is on sequential decision-making (bandits, reinforcement learning), network analysis, model selection and post-selection inference. Notably, his work involves constructing inter-firm networks, such as dynamic equity investment networks of all 40 million firms in China, to examine network effects on corporate behavior and decisions.

Jeff is passionate about teaching and has been teaching a statistical learning course at different levels, from pre-college, undergraduates, graduates and MBAs, to executive education, which has been recognized with teaching awards at both Mendoza and Wharton. At Mendoza, he teaches machine learning in urban analysis (an elective for the business analytics major and real estate minor) in spring semesters.

Background

Education

Ph D, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Statistics
BS, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Computer Science

Jobs

Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame

Publications

State Ownership in China: An Equity Network Perspective

Junhui Cai
Gu Xian
Linda Zhao
Wu Zhu

Cambridge University Press

2025

Practical Issues Concerning Assumption-Lean Inference for Generalized Linear Models

Elizabeth Ogburn
Junhui Cai
Aruun Kuchibhotla
Richard Berk
Andreas Buja

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B: Statistical Methodology

2022

Hierarchical Vintage Sparse PCA

Junhui Cai
Dan Yang
Wu Zhu
Linda Zhao

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B: Statistical Methodology

2022

Valid post-selection inference in model-free linear regression

A Kuchibhotla
L Brown
A Buja
Junhui Cai
E George
L Zhao

Annals of Statistics

2020

Statistical Theory Powering Data Science

Junhui Cai
A Mandelbaum
C Nagaraja
H Shen
L Zhao

Statistical Science

2019

Presentations

Doubly High-Dimensional Contextual Bandits: An Interpretable Model with Applications to Assortment and Pricing, Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Business Analytics, Yale University (2024)
Optimal Assortment and Pricing via Generalized MNL Models with Poisson Arrival, ESIF Economics and AI+ML Meeting, Cornell University (2024)
Personalized Reinforcement Learning: WIth Applications to Recommender Systems, IMS International Conference on Statistics and Data Science (ICSDS) (2023)
Doubly High-Dimensional Contextual Bandits: An Interpretable Model with Applications to Assortment and Pricing, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Conference (2023)
Personalized Reinforcement Learning: With Applications to Recommendation Systems, Statistics Empowering Data Science (SEEDS) Conference, University of Southern California (2023)
Ownership network and firm growth: What do forty million companies tell about the Chinese economy?, Annual Meeting of American Finance Association (AFA) 2021 (2021)
Centralization or decentralization? The evolution of state-ownership in China, China International Conference in Finance (CICF) 2021 (2021)
Ownership network and firm growth: What do forty million companies tell about the Chinese economy?, The Sixth Network Science in Economics Conference 2021 (2021)
Network Regression and Supervised Centrality Estimation, Young Scholars Conference on Machine Learning in Economics and Finance, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (2021)
Ownership network and firm growth: What do forty million companies tell about the Chinese economy?, Annual Meeting of Midwest Finance Association (MFA) 2020 (2020)
Ownership network and firm growth: What do forty million companies tell about the Chinese economy?, NBER Chinese Economy Meeting 2020 (2020)
Nonparametric Empirical Bayes Methods for Sparse and Noisy Signals, The Fourth Workshop on Higher-Order Asymptotics and Post-Selection Inference (WHOA-PSI-4), Washington University of St. Louis, 2019 (2019)
Innovation and Equity Holding Network, Workshop on Innovation and Intellectual Property: Firm Strategies and Policy Challenges in a Rapidly Changing World, Beijing, 2019 (2019)

Awards

MSBA Outstanding Professor Award, Mendoza College of Business (2025)
Best Paper Award, China Financial Research Conference (CFRC) (2021)
Murray Teaching Award, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (2021)
XiYue Best Paper Award, China International Conference in Finance (CICF) (2021)
Mack Institute Research Fellowship, Mack Institute for Innovation Management (2020)
George James Term Fund Award, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (2019)

Media

VoxChina, https://voxchina.org/show-3-311.html (2023)
Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions (SCCEI), https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/reassessing-role-state-ownership-chinas-economy (2024)