Publications:
"High School Admission Reform in China: A Welfare Analysis", (with Congyi Zhou), Review of Economic Design, 2020, Vol (24): 215 - 269
"Preference Submission Timing and College Admission Outcomes: Evidence from Turkey", (with Alper Arslan and Yang Song), Review of Economic Design, 2024, Vol (28): 189 - 241
"Purchasing Seats in School Choice and Inequality" (with Congyi Zhou), Quantitative Economics, 2024, Vol 15 (4): 1151 - 1195
"The Demand for Advanced Data Analysis Skills: Evidence From a Field Experiment" (with Xiangrui Zheng, Menghan Shen and Xiaoyang Ye), Economics of Education Review, August 2025, Vol 107, 102661
"How do Classmates Matter for the Class-size Effects?" (with Ryuichi Tanaka), Economics of Education Review, October 2025, Vol 108, 102689
Working Papers:
There is a persistent gender gap among elementary, middle, and high school students in terms of STEM test scores and choice of STEM college majors. Previous studies have shown that role model interventions – which expose students to information about inspirational individuals of the same gender, race, or background – could have a positive impact on those students’ academic performance. We conduct a randomized controlled trial in China that exposes students to female role models in STEM fields through a series of short educational videos. Our contribution to the literature is to test how role model interventions impact cognitive outcomes through changes in non-cognitive traits such as self-esteem. We control for grading bias by administering multiple-choice math and logic exams and also for various parent and teacher characteristics that may affect student outcomes. Preliminary analysis of a subsample of students in the study shows evidence of a negative effect of the intervention on students' test scores. However, our initial sample likely suffers from selection bias on student attentiveness and other characteristics that may be positively correlated with non-cognitive and cognitive outcomes. As such, the impact of the intervention on these students may be limited. We will update the findings of the study as we finalize our study sample.
"Who gets the bonus? Affirmative Action Reforms in High School Admissions in China" (with Umut Dur, Onur Kesten and Congyi Zhou)
China has implemented affirmative action reforms to improve access to quality high school education for students from underperforming middle schools by awarding bonus points to a select group of students. Our study reveals significant flaws in practice due to challenges in determining how bonuses should be distributed. We propose a choice rule that ``endogenously’’ identifies bonus-recipients and show that it is the unique acceptant and fair choice rule that efficiently assigns the bonus. Embedded in the deferred acceptance mechanism, it ensures stability, strategy-proofness, and constrained optimality. Empirical analysis shows that our proposal significantly improves representation for underperforming schools and effectively assigns the bonus to the ``right’’ students.
The relationship between advertising and consumption (with Marco Gambaro)
This paper investigates, the causal relationship between advertising and consumption with panel data at industry level for some European countries. At macroeconomic level consumption can raise only if saving will decrease. But the competition effect of advertising is better captured at industry level that allow for interaction between firms. We apply a panel Granger causality frame work to our unique data set of consumption and advertising spending on different sectors across 9 years for 5 European Union countries. We reach robust results showing that consumption Granger causes advertising, rather than the other way. Our findings also suggest that compared to economic structures of different countries and interactions of sectors, consumption is a more important driver to advertising.
Effective Boost to Fertility: Evidence from Operation of Nuclear Power Plants in Japan (with Hiroyuki Egami and Jorge Luis Garcia)
We provide evidence of a boost to fertility caused by nuclear power plants' operation as such power plants create jobs in the surrounding area. We use household-level data of the Japanese population census for 1980-2010 and link each household to granular location information. We exploit—plausibly exogenous—geographical variation of distance to a nuclear power plant from each household to identify the job creation effect. We find that the operation of a nuclear power plant leads to a 10% increase in fertility in the surrounding areas—which is an underpopulated area. We also find that marriage and employment increase. The estimates of instrumented difference-in-difference method suggest that an additional employment leads to a higher probability of having children born. On top of that, we investigate the effect of large subsidies provided to local governments after the construction of nuclear power plants. We utilize observations of households located close to the borders of the municipality to identify the causal impact of local government spending on fertility decision. The results suggest that having a larger local government’s budget and subsequent provision of better-quality public services contribute to higher fertility.
Cheap Talk with Sender's Action
This article analyzes the cheap talk game in which the Sender can take actions simultaneously with the Receiver. In this paper, I show that in this case, under certain conditions, there is no pure strategy babbling equilibrium. Also, when there is a lying equilibrium, there is not necessarily a truth-telling equilibrium.
Pre-PhD Publications
Wang, T. (2007), “Viewing the Inspiration Mechanism from a Chinese Management Perspective”, Merchant Weekly, Volume 280, No. 27, 2007, pp. 56-57 (in Chinese)
Wang, T. (2009), “Analysis of Technology Development and policy Subsystem Deviancy”, Academic Journal of Shandong Administration Institute & Shandong Economic Management Personnel Institute, Volume 100, No. 5, 2009, pp. 39-41 (in Chinese)
Wang, T. (2009), “A Brief Analysis of the Educational function of Multinational Corporations: A Case Study of Shell Company”, Oriental Forum (Academic Journal of Qingdao University), Volume 99, No. 5, 2009, pp. 76-80 (in Chinese)