Research and projects

Project 1

Urban Topography / Topology and Climate Exposure

This project develops a high-resolution, city-level dataset on urban built environments by integrating global building footprints, temporal satellite data, and urban boundary information. The goal is to systematically document how urban form evolves across space and time, particularly in developing regions.

Objectives

The project aims to create a reproducible data infrastructure to study the interaction between urban structure, climate shocks, and human responses. Future research will examine how climate change affects urban expansion, building density, and population mobility within and across cities.

Current Status

The project is currently in the data construction and exploratory analysis stage, focusing on assembling large-scale spatial datasets and validating urban indicators. This is a collaborative effort by members of SoDa Labs, with ongoing joint work on data pipelines, replication, and research design.

The project is designed as a foundation for multiple future research papers.

Project 2

Growth or Green? Officials’ Promotion Incentives and Urban Air Quality

This project studies how city leaders’ promotion incentives shape local environmental outcomes. Using evidence from Chinese cities, it examines whether growth-oriented incentives come at the cost of urban air quality.

Objectives

The project aims to identify the causal effects of official turnover and incentive structures on PM2.5 pollution, and to understand the mechanisms through which non-optimal investment decisions driven by promotion incentives affect environmental quality.

Results

Empirical results show that official turnover worsens local air quality, while green-oriented incentives significantly mitigate pollution. A spatial urban model further demonstrates that distorted investment incentives can lead to inefficient outcomes and higher pollution levels.

This project is currently at the working paper stage.

Project 3

The Effects of Chinese Development Aid on African Imports

This project examines whether and how Chinese development aid affects African countries’ imports from China. Using project-level aid data matched with detailed trade records, it studies the trade implications of China’s development finance in Africa.

Objectives

The project aims to quantify the impact of Chinese aid on African imports at both aggregate and sectoral levels, and to identify the mechanisms through which aid influences trade flows.

Results

The results show that Chinese aid significantly increases African imports from China, with particularly strong effects in infrastructure-related sectors such as energy and transport. Evidence suggests that improvements in infrastructure and trade facilitation are key channels linking aid to trade expansion.

This project is currently at the working paper stage.

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