Qingqing Sun 

Welcome! I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. I earned my Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Maryland-College Park in May 2024. My research explores the nexus of public finance and nonprofit management.

My dissertation, which has garnered the 2023 Michael Curro Award for Best Graduate Student Paper from the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management, and the 2023 Felice Davidson Perlmutter Award from the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, investigates the reasons nonprofits face high borrowing costs and default risks when financing land and property with debt. It also explores how the strategic use of mortgages, tax-exempt bonds, and private loans can mitigate these costs, analyzing from the perspectives of capital structure formation, the bond issuance process, and tax-exempt bond credit ratings.

Currently, my research focuses on three primary areas:

1. The reasons behind nonprofits’ choices of debt instruments like mortgages and municipal bonds, and the impacts of these decisions on borrowing costs.

2. The long-term and short-term effects of capital investments on nonprofits' financial health and programmatic outcomes.

3. The influence of federal and state regulations on nonprofit spending patterns and their ability to deliver services.

My work has appeared in Public Budgeting & Finance, the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, and the Academy of Management Proceedings.

On this website, you can find my CV, a summary of my teaching experience, publications and current research projects. My Google Scholar profile can be accessed here.