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Associate Professor

University of Cambridge

Faculty of Economics

Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge

CB3 9DD, UK 

Email: kai.liu@econ.cam.ac.uk

 

Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 2011 

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Research Interest: Labor Economics, Public Economics, Applied Microeconometrics

Working Papers:

17. When Do Households Adjust Consumption to Housing Wealth Shocks? Understanding the Joint Transmission of Income and Wealth Changes (with Shawn Ni, Taehee Oh and Youn Seol). PDF. June 2023.

16. The Decline of Routine Tasks, Education Investments, and Intergenerational Mobility (with Patrick Bennett and Kjell Salvanes). PDF.  Online Appendix. May 2024.

15. Changing Families: Family Relationships, Parental Decisions and Child Development (with Marc Chan). PDF. Revised April 2024. Accepted, Journal of Labor Economics.

14. Understanding Program Complementarities: Estimating the Dynamic Effects of Head Start with Multiple Alternatives (with Marc Chan and Antonio Dalla-Zuanna). PDF. June 2022

13. Pulled-in and Crowded-out: Heterogeneous Outcomes of Merit-based School Choice (with Antonio Dalla-Zuanna and Kjell Salvanes). PDF. Revised May 2024.  Revise and resubmit, AEJ-Applied.

12. Health Insurance, Agricultural Production and Investments (with Benjapon Prommawin and Fred Schroyen). PDF. Revised, March 2024. Revise and resubmit, Journal of Health Economics.

11. Understanding Program Complementarities: Estimating the Dynamic Effects of a Training Program with Multiple Alternatives (with Antonio Dalla-Zuanna). New draft coming soon

10. Education, Earnings Dynamics and Life-cycle Inequality (with Magne Mogstad and Kjell Salvanes). PDF. New draft coming soon.

Publications:

9. The Supply of Skill and Endogenous Technical Change: Evidence From a College Expansion Reform (with Pedro Carneiro and Kjell Salvanes). PDF. Revised March 2022. Accepted, Journal of the European Economic Association.

8. Wage Risk and the Value of Job Mobility in Early Employment Careers. PDF. Journal of Labor Economics, 37 (2019): 139-185 .

7. Life-Cycle and Intergenerational Effects of Child Care Reforms (with Marc Chan).  PDFOnline Appendix. Quantitative Economics, 9 (2018): 659-706 .

6. Insuring against Health Shocks: Health Insurance and Household Choices. PDFJournal of Health Economics, 46 (2016): 16-32.

5. Political Uncertainty and Household Savings (with Rolf Aaberge and Yu Zhu). PDFJournal of Comparative Economics, 45 (2017): 154-170.  Coverage: IZA Newsroom

4. Good Skills in Bad Times: Cyclical Skill Mismatch and the Long-term Effects of Graduating in a Recession (with Kjell Salvanes and Erik Sorensen). PDFEuropean Economic Review, 84 (2016): 3-17 (lead article).  Coverage: OECD blog

3. Explaining the Gender Wage Gap: Estimates from a Dynamic Model of Job Changes and Hours Changes. PDFQuantitative Economics, 7 (2016): 411–447.

2. Bad times at a tender age - how education dampens the impact of graduating in a recession (with Erik Sorensen and Kjell Salvanes). PDF. Nordic Economic Policy Review (2014): 51-73.

1. Income Uncertainty and Household Savings in China (with Marcos Chamon and Eswar Prasad).  PDFJournal of Development Economics, 105 (2013): 164-177.  Coverage: Vox, TIME