David Hirshleifer is an American economist. He is a professor of finance and currently holds the Merage chair in Business Growth at the University of California at Irvine. He was previously a professor at the University of Michigan, The Ohio State University, and UCLA. He researched behavioral finance and informational cascades. In 2007, he was ranked as the 73rd most cited economist by web of science's Most-Cited Scientists in Economics & Business .