Ziming Xia is a PhD student in Ethics and Legal Studies at The Wharton School, jointly with the Philosophy Department, of the University of Pennsylvania. He has broad research interests in questions at the intersection of philosophy, economics, and law. His current topics of interest include the ethics of aggregation (the permissibility of aggregating harms of lesser degree to collectively outweigh more serious harms) , the ethics of deception (the moral comparison between lying and mere misleading), and corporate accountability (criminal vs civil sanctions for corporations). Other interests include the moral risks in nudging, research ethics in randomized controlled trials in development economics, and normative decision theory under uncertainty, especially related to issues in climate and health policy.
Prior to the PhD, Ziming spent his undergraduate years at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he completed a bachelor’s degree in economics and developed an interest in philosophy. He later worked in primary market investment as a financial advisory intern before returning to LSE to pursue a master’s degree in economics and philosophy. He went on to pursue a second master’s degree in philosophy at the University of St Andrews to be properly grounded in philosophy and ethics.
Ziming has a long-term commitment in making knowledge more accessible to people outside academia. His work includes translating the book “Conversations on Ethics”(Author: Alex Voorhoeve) with Kangyu Wang (HKU) into Chinese as 善哉问 (Shanghai Literature and Arts Publishing House, 2025), and teaching introductory courses in ethics and philosophy to secondary school students in China.
His name is pronounced as “zee‑ming she‑ah” in English. He welcomes emails regarding research, graduate school experiences, or other things he can be of help.
