About

Charles M. C. Lee is a Professor of Accounting at the Foster School of Business, University of Washington, holding the position of Hanson Professor of Accounting since 2022. His academic background includes a PhD and MBA from the University of Waterloo, and his expertise encompasses behavioral finance, financial accounting, and portfolio management. Lee has held numerous prestigious academic appointments, including the Moghadam Family Professor and Professor of Accounting at Stanford Graduate School of Business, as well as positions at Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management and the University of Michigan. His professional experience extends beyond academia, having served as a co-founder and general partner at Nipun Capital LP, and held senior roles in equity research at Barclays Global Investors (now Blackrock). Lee's research focuses on market microstructure, equity valuation, financial analysis, and behavioral finance, with notable contributions to understanding market participants' cognitive constraints, security market regulation, and the functioning of financial markets. He has been recognized with multiple awards for teaching excellence and research, and has served on editorial boards of leading accounting and finance journals.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Psychiatry
• Virology
• Developmental psychology
• Psychotherapist
• Gerontology
• Internal medicine

Selected publications

• Cutaneous lymphadenoma with locally aggressive features

  JAAD Case Reports · 2026-01-08

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Alcohol and Cannabis Perceived Descriptive and Injunctive Norms, Personal Use, and Consequences Among 2-Year College Students

  Behavioral Sciences · 2025-02-22 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Two-year college students represent 35% of U.S. undergraduates, yet substance use among them is understudied. Grounded in Social Norms Theory, the present study examined alcohol and cannabis use prevalence and associations between perceived peer use (descriptive norms), approval of use (injunctive norms), and personal use among 2-year students. We also explored whether identification with the reference group or age moderated associations. Data were collected from May through August of 2020 from 1037 2-year college students in Washington State (screening sample) aged 18–29. Of these, 246 participants who reported recent, moderate alcohol and/or cannabis use completed a follow-up survey. Screening survey participants reported past-month alcohol and cannabis use and demographics, while follow-up participants provided data on perceived peer descriptive and injunctive norms and group identification. Screening participants reported drinking an average of 3.32 (SD = 7.76) drinks weekly and being high for 8.18 h (SD = 20.95). Follow-up participants overestimated peer alcohol and cannabis use. Regression analyses showed perceived descriptive alcohol and cannabis norms were positively associated with personal use, and perceived injunctive alcohol norms were positively related to alcohol-related consequences. Differences by student age were also observed. Findings suggest perceived peer norms are risk factors for substance use behaviors among 2-year college students. Tailored normative feedback interventions may reduce high-risk use in this underserved population.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• What's the Harm in Starting Early? Daily and Long-Term Risks of Daytime Drinking in Young Adults

  Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs · 2025-01-08

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  OBJECTIVE: There is a robust body of work demonstrating that certain drinking practices, such as pregaming or playing drinking games, are linked to heavier, riskier patterns of drinking among college students. However, less attention has been paid to other drinking practices that are relatively common among undergraduates, such as daytime drinking (i.e., drinking before 4:00 P.M.). METHOD: = 403), the present study tested daytime drinking as both a proximal (daily-level drinking outcomes) and distal (alcohol use disorder symptoms) risk factor for hazardous drinking. RESULTS: Daytime drinking was reported by more than 70% of the sample and on approximately 15% of drinking days. Daily-level findings indicated that compared with non-daytime drinking days, daytime drinking days were significantly associated with more drinks consumed, more high-risk drinking practices (i.e., heavy episodic or high-intensity drinking), and greater subjective intoxication. Longitudinal analyses identified frequent daytime drinking as a risk factor for increased hazardous drinking behavior, particularly among individuals who were younger or reported lower hazardous drinking at baseline. CONCLUSIONS: Findings add to a sparse literature supporting daytime drinking as a risky drinking practice among college students. Future work should aim to further characterize contextual and psychosocial factors associated with daytime drinking practices.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Alcohol use disorder symptoms are kinda detectable in daily life (but it depends on how they are operationalized)

  2025-08-19 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Contemporary theoretical models articulate how people experience symptoms of alcohol use disorders (AUD) in their daily lives, but few studies have modeled these symptoms at the daily level. We estimated Rasch and 2PL IRT models in two ecological momentary assessment samples of regularly drinking young adults (n = 527, age 18 – 22, 45% female) assessed over 3,963 alcohol use days. Symptoms were relatively common on drinking days, especially symptoms related to consumption (such as time spent or larger/longer). Items related to consumption (e.g. tolerance, larger/longer) were more common than alcohol-related consequences (e.g. interpersonal consequences). The specific threshold or item used to define each AUD symptom could have a substantial impact on item parameters. Tolerance best loaded onto a factor of daily AUD symptoms when operationalized as sensitivity to the effects of alcohol, while larger/longer was best reflected as drinking much more than intended (e.g. 3+). Daily life research focusing only on alcohol-related consequences misses important information about common experiences of AUD symptoms in daily life. Further refinement of daily measures of AUD symptoms could help researchers understand how the disorder develops over time.

  PublisherDOI

• Depressive Symptoms and Substance Use: Longitudinal Examination of Alcohol and Cannabis Coping Mechanisms in Young Adults

  Prevention Science · 2025-10-08 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A just‐in‐time adaptive personalized mobile app intervention produces limited short‐term reductions in heavy episodic drinking frequency in college students: A randomized control trial during the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 pandemic

  Alcohol Clinical and Experimental Research · 2025-04-25 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  BACKGROUND: High-risk drinking among college students is common, and alcohol expectancies and experienced consequences are proximal predictors of use. This study tested short- and long-term efficacy of a personalized just-in-time adaptive intervention with daily messages about alcohol use, alcohol expectancies, and consequences delivered via mobile app. METHODS: Participants were 408 students enrolled at a 2- or 4-year college (75% 4-year; 64% female) who completed twice-daily assessments for 21 days and follow-up surveys at 1-, 6-, and 12-months. Data collection spanned January 2020 through April 2022. Participants were randomized to either an intervention condition receiving daily intervention messages and other related alcohol and expectancy-focused content via the app or an assessment-only control condition. Both conditions were administered daily surveys through the app. RESULTS: Poisson multilevel models were conducted to examine intervention effects on alcohol outcomes (i.e., drinks per week, heavy episodic drinking frequency, peak estimated blood alcohol concentration, and alcohol-related consequences, as well as positive and negative alcohol expectancies) at each follow-up assessment. On average, participants in both conditions reported decreased alcohol use outcomes, consequences, and expectancies at 1-, 6-, and 12-month follow-up compared to baseline. A single statistically significant difference between participants in the intervention and control conditions was observed at 1-month follow-up. Specifically, participants in the intervention condition reported a 17% greater decrease in heavy episodic drinking frequency than participants in the control condition, on average. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight the complexities of developing, implementing, and testing adaptive interventions, particularly within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  PublisherDOI

• Testing the efficacy and mechanisms of an SMS intervention focused on motivating peer network support to reduce alcohol consumption in non-collegiate young adults: Protocol for a randomized trial

  Contemporary Clinical Trials · 2025-09-08

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Alcohol and cannabis use predicted by affect-urgency interactions in everyday life

  2025-11-20

  articleOpen access

  The hypothesis that urgency, a trait quantifying individual differences in impulsive behaviors driven by intense emotions, moderates associations between affect and alcohol use has received inconsistent support in EMA research. This registered report tested whether trait- and state-level urgency moderate affect-substance use (alcohol and cannabis use) associations in young adults. 496 adults (aged 18-22) completed ecological momentary assessment surveys five times daily across 32 days over eight weekends. Positive affect was associated with increased alcohol use probability, while negative affect was associated with decreased alcohol use probability; cannabis use showed minimal associations with daily affect. Contrary to hypotheses, we found minimal evidence that urgency moderated daily affect-substance use associations. Interaction effects were consistently estimated around the null value with narrow credible intervals. Results challenge theoretical predictions about urgency's role in emotion-driven substance use and support simpler affect-substance use models.

  PublisherDOI

• Atypical eccrine poroma of the buttock: Expanding the clinical spectrum of a rare benign neoplasm

  JAAD Case Reports · 2025-12-18

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Monthly patterns of depressive symptoms and substance use and their relation to longer-term hazardous substance use and mental health problems: Examining mutual maintenance using monthly data from young adults

  Addictive Behaviors · 2025-03-12 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Predictors and consequences of young adult marijuana use and concurrent and simultaneous alcohol use: Month to month variation across 24 consecutive months

  NIH · $981k · 2019–2023

• Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for Community College Students (BASICCS)

  NIH · $551k · 2015–2019

• Personalized mobile app intervention: Challenging alcohol expectancies to reduce high-risk alcohol use and consequences

  NIH · $4.2M · 2010–2024

• Intensive Daily Measurement of Simultaneous Alcohol and Marijuana Use in a High-Risk Community Sample of Young Adults: Impacts on Acute and Longer-term Use and Consequences

  NIH · $2.3M · 2016–2022

• Developmental Models of High-Risk Alcohol Use & Social Roles in Young Adulthood

  NIH · $2.8M · 2014–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Mary E. Larimer

  University of Washington

  90 shared

• Megan E. Patrick

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  79 shared

• Melissa A. Lewis

  University of North Texas

  78 shared

• Clayton Neighbors

  University of Houston

  69 shared

• Anne M. Fairlie

  University of Washington

  57 shared

• Isaac C. Rhew

  University of Washington

  50 shared

• Jason R. Kilmer

  University of Washington

  44 shared

• Scott Graupensperger

  35 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Family Studies and Human Development

  University of Arizona

  2002

Awards & honors

• Best Paper Award, AAA Spark Conference, Western Regional, 20…
• Teaching Excellence Award in all three Stanford GSB degree p…
• First place, Q Group’s Roger F. Murray Prize research compet…
• AAA Innovation in Financial Accounting Education Award, 2017
• AAA Presidential Scholar (Keynote Speaker at the AAA Annual…