Projects

This page provides current projects. Any students, researchers, or practitioners interested in this work are encouraged to get in touch with me.

1.       Foreign Direct Investment by Region and Regional Catching-up

Attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) is becoming an important element in strategies for regional economic developments in developing countries, as a result of globalization and liberalization of economies. FDI can promote the growth of economies, as a source of finance, technology, management, labor skills, and competition. However, abilities to both attract and to benefit from FDI vary a great deal depending on the host region since institutional and policy-related factors both enable and constrain host regions in their efforts to attract and appropriate beneficial spillovers from FDI.

This project looks into the dynamic behavior and behavioral determinants of FDI by region and of the regional FDI gap in China over the 1990-2010 period to assess the effectiveness of these national policies and examine the evolution of FDI dynamics. The result of this research project will provide economic developers and policy makers at interregional level the multi-temporal institutional perspective needed to plan the future economic development and formulate investment policies in accordance with economic development in such a way to attract FDI and avoid aggravating competition and hollowing out domestic economies.

2.       Agglomeration Economies in Chinese Urbanization: Roles of Population and Migration in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Location

Agglomeration economies have been well known as one of fundamental explanations of industrial location. Urbanization economy is one of agglomeration economies influencing FDI location, which is related to a city size. The identification and examination of microfoundations of agglomeration can help understand the process and mechanisms behind the behavior of FDI location. China’s rapid urbanization has been considered as an important force shaping the world development in the twenty-first century, but the impact of urbanization economies on FDI has not been thoroughly identified in the context of Chinese urbanization, especially in the 2000s.

This project distinguishes urbanization agglomeration effects resulting from two different urbanization processes and assesses their differences in population and migration. The results are expected to provide policy implications on population and migration in the process of urbanization, especially the migration between core cities and periphery cities, in order to create and promote their spread effects. The long-term goal of this project is to build a capital and labor data infrastructure that could facilitate urbanization and globalization studies in developing countries. 

          3.        Amenities, Density, and Housing Prices

Three decades after the Chinese government launched the current housing reform and marketization, a gradually more important issue than improving indoor domestic space is how to better provide housing in a physical environment that residents prefer. At the same time, due to China’s rapid urbanization, automobility, and industrialization, the increasing desire to protect environments and satisfy residents has led to an emphasis on the creation of a sustainable urban environment. Amenities including both urban and natural amenities increasingly influence people’s location choices, and urban growth and decline in the context of China’s rapid urban development. This project focuses on how space, accessibility to urban amenities and proximity to natural amenities interplay to influence housing prices in Wuhan metropolitan area of Central China.

          4.        FDI and Global Transboundary Pollution: Sectoral Linkages and Political Drivers

This project fosters a greater understanding of the global political and economic drivers of transboundary air pollution by testing the empirical pollution haven hypothesis in China, investigating how FDI influences the concentrations of ambient pollutants in both China and origin countries of Northeast Asia, and assessing the connections between environmental regulations and FDI, to have a better understanding of responsibility attribution directly contributing to the policy with which countries and international agents such as the United Nations, regulate FDI and air pollution emissions to address greenhouse gas emissions reductions. This project examines the economy-wide contribution of foreign firms and sectors to pollutant emissions by using the LexisNexis Corporate Affiliations database and the EDGAR-HTAP project data

          5.        Emerging Artificial Intelligence Regions in the United States: Insights for Regional Variation and Inequality of Technological Innovation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has played an increasingly important role in our lives and economy since the current AI boom began in 2012. The competition to reap its benefits is fierce since AI is seen as an engine of productivity and economic growth. However, the disruptive effect of AI could have far-reaching consequences for the labor market for its potential to increase inequality, push down wages, and shrink the tax base. These concerns stimulate the increasing amount of research into examining the positive and negative impacts of AI and fostering the healthy development of AI. The United States has profited tremendously from being the early developers and international leaders in AI. 

Despite widespread concerns about increasing inequality resulting from the growth of AI industries, there has been little academic research on the topic. Given this problem, this empirical research examines the regional variation and inequality of different areas of AI industries in terms of scientific and technical outputs of AI researchers as measured by the publication of papers and patents from 1990 through 2018 in the United States. This understanding is essential for addressing the potential positive and negative impacts of AI that motivate local and regional policy responses.