Publications
Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Dragon Sons: Direct and Indirect Effects of Superstition on Education (Accepted at Kyklos)
Abstract: Previous research has used the zodiac superstition to study the impact of parental beliefs. I develop a new empirical method for evaluating the impact of the zodiac superstition. The new method nests previous methods and allows me to separately estimate possibly opposing effects. Using the Taiwan Social Change Survey, I find evidence of a positive effect for being born in the dragon zodiac years and a negative effect for being born in the tiger zodiac years. The effects for being born in certain zodiacs are strongest among males and those older within cohort.
Working Papers
Crowding Out the Shadow: Effect of School Construction on Private Supplementary Education in Taiwan (Under Revision)
Abstract: School construction has been one of the major education policies to reduce private after-school tutoring in Taiwan. However, there is no direct evidence of the effect of the policy on private tutoring. Using data from the 1991-2006 Survey of Family Income and Expenditure collected by the Taiwanese government, I study the effect of the public school availability on household spending on private tutoring. Exploiting variation in high school construction across counties throughout the 1990s, I find that a 1 percentage point increase in the probability of getting into a public high school is associated with a 0.7 percent reduction in households' spending on private tutoring. However, the increase in school availability does not seem to impact whether a household participates in private tutoring or not.
Schooling the Superstitious: Evidence from Taiwan (Under Revision)
Abstract: Researchers find both an increase in the prevalence of superstitious acts over time and a positive association between an individual's educational attainment and participation in superstitious activities. Yet, these studies do not address selection into education groups. In this paper I examine the causal impact of education, exploiting the extension of compulsory education from six to nine years in Taiwan in 1968. I conduct my analysis using the Taiwan Social Change Survey from 1984 to 2015. IV estimates show that educational attainment decreases belief in superstition and the prevalence of superstitious activities. In contrast, I find that OLS estimates are biased upwards.
Regarding the Official Numbers of Private Tutoring Centers in Taiwan (Under Revision)
Abstract: Despite a large-scale education reform to limit private tutoring, many papers reported a dramatically increasing number of private tutoring centers during the 1990s in Taiwan. In this note, I argue that the official statistics cited are problematic. I compare the statistics cited by various papers. I suggest a possible mechanism driving the differences in statistics across papers. I discuss the implications of the data error on evaluating the education reform.