Lusha Xu University of California, Riverside · Economics

Lusha Xu

Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at the University of California, Riverside

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Lusha Xu

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of California, Riverside, on the job market in 2026–27. I work at the intersection of applied macroeconomics and machine learning, with particular emphasis on what corporate disclosures reveal about aggregate economic activity.

My job market paper uses large language models to extract forward-looking firm-level signals from more than 20,000 SEC 10-K and 10-Q filings, and shows that the resulting “textual factors” improve out-of-sample forecasts of GDP growth. I also study how central bank digital currencies reshape bank intermediation and lending risk.

I teach across the Ph.D. macroeconomics core and the undergraduate curriculum, and I serve as Lead Consultant at UC Riverside’s Graduate Quantitative Methods Center.

You can find my CV here. The best way to reach me is at lusha.xu@gmail.com.

Job Market Paper

From Financial Reports to Macroeconomic Forecasts: An LLM-Based Approach

Job Market Paper

Abstract: Does the granular, qualitative information in corporate financial reports improve our understanding of aggregate economic activity? I use a Large Language Model to perform structured information extraction from over 20,000 SEC 10-K and 10-Q filings (2001–2025), quantifying firm-level operating conditions, labor shortages, and investment plans. Aggregated into size-weighted quarterly indices, these “textual factors” significantly improve out-of-sample GDP growth forecasts relative to standard benchmarks.

Full abstract and related work →

Research Interests