Research
Publications:
High School Admission Reform in China: A Welfare Analysis, 2020 (with Congyi Zhou), Review of Economic Design, Vol (24): 215 - 269, PDF
Preference Submission Timing and College Admission Outcomes: Evidence from Turkey (with Alper Arslan and Yang Song), Review of Economic Design, forthcoming
Working Papers:
We study a mechanism that give students the option of paying higher tuition to attend their preferred schools. This seat-purchasing mechanism is neither strategy-proof nor stable. Our paper combines administrative and survey data to estimate students’ preferences and conduct welfare analysis. We find that changing from a deferred acceptance mechanism to the cadet-optimal stable mechanism reduces students’ welfare but that adopting the observed seat-purchasing mechanism alleviates this welfare loss. Meanwhile, students from rich communities prefer to pay higher tuition to stay at preferred schools, while those from poor communities are more likely be priced out to worse schools.
This paper studies the effect of class-size reduction on students' academic outcomes with a special focus on its heterogeneity by classmates' characteristics. We estimate the causal effects of class-size reduction on students' mathematics and language test scores, controlling student-teacher fixed effects and applying the predicted class size with a cap as an instrument for the actual class size. Using rich panel data on Japanese primary school students, we find that the average effect of class size reduction is positive and robust for math test scores and that classes with high-ability classmates benefit even more from class size reduction. We find that the effect of class size reduction depends positively on the ability of the student with the lowest rank in a class. In addition, we find that classes with a high share of female students benefit more from class size reduction. Our findings provide strong support for the theoretical framework of Lazear (2001).
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.
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.
Dynamic Matching: Centralized Early Admissions andAffirmative Actions (with Congyi Zhou)
In the past decade, one of largest changes in the Chinese high school admission is adopting a Chinese version of affirmative actions. The Chinese affirmative action involves a flexible and privilege-based school choice method that has gained profound fame through time. Specific.ally, in the admission procedure, several designated students receive a privilege (lump-sum extra scores) apart from their exam scores. Two popular procedures are used to determine who could receive this privilege: one involves an early selection before the normal admission procedure, and the other adjusts the priority based on the rank-ordered list submitted by schools also in the normal admission procedure. However, neither of these two mechanisms is minimal responsive or respects improvement. This study proposes a new privilege-based mechanism, namely, the student optimal type-privilege mechanism (SOTPM), which is strategy-proof, minimal responsive and respects improvement. We also combine a administrative record with survey data from China to estimate students' preferences and conduct the counterfactual analysis. We .find that SOTPM can considerably increase the chances of students from low quality middle schools to gain entry into good quality high schools.
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)