[1] "The Long-term Impact of Higher Education: Evidence from the Gaokao Reinstatement in China". Economics of Education Review, 97(8), Article 102488.
[2] "User-Centered Counseling and Male Involvement in Contraceptive Decision-Making: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial," (joint with M. Karra). JMIR Research Protocols, 10(4), e24884.
"User-Centered Counseling in Contraceptive Decision Making: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Urban Malawi", joint with Mahesh Karra.
We conduct a randomized controlled trial to test how a woman-centered approach to counseling shapes contraceptive preferences and behavior. We explore how decision-making is driven by: 1) the number and types of contraceptive methods presented to women based on their own stated preferences for contraception (targeted counseling); and 2) the presence of male partners at the time of counseling. A total of 782 women were randomized to one of four treatment arms in which they received either targeted or standard counseling, cross-randomized with an invitation to bring their partners to counseling. Women were subsequently offered free transport and access to family planning for one month. Women who received targeted counseling were 15.6 percent less likely to be using their stated ideal method at follow-up and were 17.9 percent more likely to be discordant between their stated ideal method and method use at follow-up. Women who were encouraged to invite their partners to counseling were 14.1 percent less likely to change their stated ideal method from counseling to follow-up but 16.4 percent more likely to use their stated ideal method at follow-up. While both approaches aim to promote informed choice for family planning, neither necessarily yields strictly preferred outcomes for women.
Conferences and Seminars: Boston University School of Public Health 2023, Population Reference Bureau (PRB) 2022, NEUDC 2021, PAA 2021, IPC 2021, iHEA 2021, Erasmus University Health Seminar 2021, IFPRI (Malawi) Seminar 2021, IUSSP 2020
"Correcting Sampling and Nonresponse Biases in Phone Survey Poverty Estimation Using Reweighting and Poverty Projection Models", joint with Nobuo Yoshida and Shinya Takamatsu. World Bank Policy Research Working Papers, No. 10656.
To monitor the evolution of household living conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank conducted COVID-19 High-Frequency Phone Surveys (HFPS) in around 80 countries. Phone surveys are cheap and easy to implement, but they have some major limitations, such as the absence of poverty data, sampling bias due to incomplete telephone coverage in many developing countries, and frequent nonresponses to phone interviews. To overcome these limitations, the World Bank conducted pilots in 20 countries where Survey of Wellbeing via Instant and Frequent Tracking (SWIFT), a rapid poverty monitoring tool, was adopted to estimate poverty rates based on 10 – 15 simple questions collected via phone interviews, and where sampling weights were adjusted to correct the sampling and nonresponse bias. This paper examines whether reweighting procedures and the SWIFT methodology can eliminate the bias in poverty estimation based on the COVID-19 HFPS. Experiments using artificial phone survey samples show that (i) reweighting procedures cannot fully eliminate bias in poverty estimates, as previous research has demonstrated. But (ii) when combined with SWIFT poverty projections, they effectively eliminate bias in poverty estimates and other statistics.
Conferences and Seminars: United Nations Economic Commission for Europe 2022, IARIW Conference 2022, World Bank Internal Meeting 2022, Quality Enhancement Review Meeting 2021
Books: The Concept and Empirical Evidence of SWIFT Methodology
Policy Briefs: St. Lucia HFPS Round 1, Uganda HFPS Round 1
"Financial Reporting Quality during Gloomy Days: Long-term Exposure to Unpleasant Weather and Real Earnings Management", joint with Huaxi Zhang and Byungcherl Charlie Sohn. Revise and Resubmit.
We investigate whether long-term exposure to unpleasant air quality affects a firm’s real earnings management (REM). Using a sample of U.S. listed firms and visibility, a novel measure of perceived air quality, we find that firms whose managers and employees are exposed to unpleasant air quality are more likely to implement short-term-oriented REM but do not differ in the extent of conducting accrual-based earnings management (AEM). A one standard deviation increase in visibility is associated with a decrease in REM by 27 percent. Interestingly, this effect is disproportionately associated with the overproduction of inventory and cuts in discretionary expenses, rather than manipulation of sales price or credit terms. The results suggest the existence of earnings-target-oriented managerial myopia among firms exposed to unpleasant air quality. The cognitive bias of the managers and decreased productivity of the employees induced by poor air quality are shown to be the potential channel through which unpleasant air quality triggers firms’ myopic earnings management behaviors.
Conferences and Seminars: Nankai University (09/2023), Shanghai Business School (04/2023), Tsinghua University PBCSF (12/2022)
The Long-term Impact of Higher Education on Marriage, Fertility, and Migration: Evidence from the Gaokao Reinstatement in China
A substantial literature has examined the association between education and fertility outcomes, but little has focused on the long-term impact of higher education on fertility over an individual's life cycle or the gender differences on this front. This paper exploits the reinstatement of the National College Entrance Examination in 1977 as a natural experiment, investigating the causal effect of higher education on an individual's marital status, number of co-resident children, and migration experience in the long term. Using two recent censuses (1990 and 2000) to investigate discontinuous changes in the likelihood of completing high school and attending college around a cutoff birth date, and employing a combination of regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference methods, I find that cohorts that were more likely to complete high school and obtain a college education as a result of the reform postpone their marriage by 4.1 years on average in their 40s, were 6.9 percent less likely to be ever married in their 40s, co-resided with fewer children in their 30s, and were more likely to migrate in both their 30s and 40s.
“The Construction Effect of Transportation Infrastructure: Evidence from the High-Speed Railway System in China”, July 2021.
This paper investigates three earliest high-speed railway (HSR) lines located in mid-southern China, and evaluates how the construction of these HSR lines affects the local economic activity. By formulating a set of counterfactual railway lines following the HSR planbook (MLTRP) issued by the central government, and by utilizing nighttime light data from 1992 to 2013, I implement an event-study analysis to quantify how HSR construction transforms the local economic activity as is proxied by the nighttime luminosity. Furthermore, I employ county-level data on economic indicators to pin down the channels at work underlying the positive effects. The results I obtain are summarized as follows: 1) the grid-level nighttime luminosity significantly increased compared to the counterfactual regions one year after the HSR construction, but there is no significant impact following the operation of the HSR lines; 2) the positive construction impacts can be explained by the provisions of associated local amenities, temporary clearing of households, as well as structural transformation from agricultural towards non-agricultural sectors.
Conferences and Seminars: Renmin University of China, Urban Economic Association North American Meeting 2021, Applied Young Economist Webinar 2021
"Soft Power, Economic Development, and Spatial Spillovers of China", joint with Yuyang Pu and Shuo Qi
"Distance and Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from the High-Speed Railway Network In China", joint with Ying Wang