Technology and Human Capital Formation
How exposure to technology reshapes skills, motivation, and beliefs
Chen, Yvonne J., Li Li, and Yun Xiao, “Early life exposure to tap water and the development of cognitive skills.” Journal of Human Resources, Vol 57, Nov 2022, pp 2113-2149
Chen, Yvonne J., Namrata Chindarkar and Yun Xiao, “The effect of reliable electricity on health facilities, health information, and health services utilization: Evidence from rural Gujarat, India.” (Open Access), Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition, 38(7), 2019
Featured in: WHO report UN ESCAP report India Today The Conversation
Chen, Yvonne J., Jie Gong, Jin Li, and Zibo Zhao, "Better Technology, Worse Motivation: GenAI’s Mediocrity Trap," revise and resubmit at Management Science
Featured in: The Economist
Chen, Yvonne J., Li Li, and Yun Xiao, “The Gendered Effect of Childhood Television Exposure on Educational Aspirations and Attainment.” Submitted
Chen, Yvonne J., Li Li, Shiko Maruyama, and Peiyao Shen, "From Coal to Clean: The Impact of Clean Energy Adoption on Children’s Health." (Draft available soon)
Social Norms and Institutional Constraints
How norms, institutions, and incentive structures influence behavior and responses to technological change.
Chen, Yvonne J., Deniz Dutz, Li Li, S. Moon, Edward Vytlacil and Songfa Zhong, “Eliciting Willingness-to-Pay to Decompose Beliefs and Preferences that Determine Selection into Competition in Lab Experiments,” Journal of Econometrics, Volume 243, Issues 1-2, July 2024
Chen, Yvonne J., Zhiwu Chen, and Shijun He, “Social norms and household savings rate in China.” Review of Finance, Volume 23, Issue 5, September 2019, pp 961–991
Chen, Yvonne J., Pei Li, and Yi Lu, “Career concerns and multitasking bureaucrats: Evidence of a target-based performance evaluation system in China.” Journal of Development Economics, Vol 133, 84-101, July 2018 (ESI 1% Highly Cited)
Chindarkar, Namrata, Yvonne J. Chen and Dennis Wichelns, “Government-Civil society co-management contracts for rural water services: Lessons from India.” Policy Design and Practice, Vol 1, Issue 4, 2018
Chindarkar, N., Yvonne J. Chen and Dennis Welchens, “Impact of State—Non-State Co-management Contracts on Water Supply in Rural India: Evidence from a Natural Experiment” in Kekez, A; Howlett, M.; and M Ramesh (eds.) Collaboration in Public Service Delivery: Promises and Pitfalls. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019
Chen, Yvonne J., and Namrata Chindarkar, “The value of skills – raising the socio-economic status for rural women in India.” Development Policy Review, Vol 35(2), Jan 2017
“Electricity Subsidy and Clean Energy Transition - a Field Experiment,” with Andrea La Nauze, Peiyao Shen AEA RCT Registry
Technology and Development Paths
How technological environments could potentially shape growth and inequality.
Chindarkar, Namrata, Yvonne J. Chen and Shilpa Sathe, “Impact of farm electricity supply management on farm households in Gujarat, India,” Energy Policy, Volume 141, June 2020, Article 111407
Chen, Yvonne J., Namrata Chindarkar, and Jane Zhao, “Water and time use – Evidence from Kathmandu, Nepal.” Water Policy, 21(S1), pp 76-100, 2019
Chindarkar, Namrata, Yvonne J. Chen and Yogendra B. Gurung, “Subjective well-being effects of coping costs: Evidence from household water supply in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.” Journal of Happiness Studies, December 2019, Volume 20, Issue 8, pp 2581–2608
Thampapillai, Dodo J. and Yvonne J. Chen, “Environmental macroeconomics: A neglected theme in environmental economics – Leave alone economics.“ Singapore Economic Review, Sept 2018
Computational Measurement and Research Tools
Developing new tools to study policy at scale
W Xun, D. Whittington, Yvonne J. Chen, and R. Zuo, “Design of Policy Research in the Era of Generative AI.” Journal of Asian Public Policy, 18(2), 455-481, 2025
Peiwen Jiang, Haitong Jiang, Ruhui Ma*, Yvonne Jie Chen*, Jinhua Cheng*, TST: A Schema-Based Top-Down and Dynamic-Aware Agent of Text-to-Table Tasks, Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics(ACL), 2025
P. Jiang, Z. Zhao, X. Lin, R. Ma*, YJ. Chen*, J. Cheng*, "TKGT: Redefinition and A New Way of Text-to-Table Tasks Based on Real World Demands and Knowledge Graphs Augmented LLMs."(*co-corresponding authors), Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), 2024
Research Grants and Awards
National Science Foundation of China(中国国家自然科学基金面上项目)2025, PI, “The Welfare Impact of Clean Energy Transition”, RMB400,000
National Science Foundation of China(中国国家自然科学基金青年项目)2021,PI, “Gender Difference in Selection into Compensation Schemes”RMB240,000
Shanghai Oriental Scholar Distinguished Professor 2019
Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) Tier 1 Grant (FRC) 2017 – 2019, PI, “Depreciation of Natural Resource Stocks and Macroeconomic Performance”, SGD 30,000