Working Papers

"Growth with Regional Redistribution" (Job Market Paper), [Draft], [Slides]

Scheduled Presentations: 2025 Econometric Society European Winter Meeting (declined due to scheduling conflict), Chinese Economists Society 2026 North America Annual Conference.

Abstract:  This paper develops a growth model featuring interregional fiscal redistribution. In China, the central government takes substantial tax revenue from local governments and reallocates resources across regions. I model this redistribution as a progressive tax on local fiscal income and document a sharp rise in progressivity. Exploiting the 2002 tax reform in an event-study design, I show that the increased central tax claim reduced local infrastructure investment and slowed regional growth. To quantify the effects of increased redistribution on regional convergence and economic growth, I develop a general equilibrium framework of local fiscal policy under progressive redistribution. I find that rising progressivity explains 43% of the decline in the cross-provincial variance of log GDP per capita and reduces aggregate TFP by 0.5 percentage points. Finally, I use this framework to study the determinants of optimal progressivity.

"A Politico-Growth Theory of Local Fiscal Policy and Regional Redistribution", [Draft] 

Abstract: This paper proposes a politico-economic theory of regional dynamics in an environment comprising a set of small open economies, where local governments allocate fiscal spending between public goods and investment without commitment and the central government persistently redistributes fiscal resources across regions. I analytically characterize local fiscal policy, aggregate dynamics, and the steady state under a progressive redistribution scheme. The framework is used to compute the time path of optimal progressivity subject to political implementability constraints.

"GDP Misreporting and Economic Convergence", submitted, [Draft] 

Abstract: This paper uses nighttime light data to study GDP misreporting and its implications for economic convergence. In China, while official statistics suggest an annual convergence rate of 2.1% after the 2000s, nighttime light data imply a lower rate between 0.7% and 1.4%. Following the 2002 tax reform, the central government increased fiscal redistribution from high- to low-income provinces, raising the marginal cost of overreporting GDP. As a result, rich provinces, facing higher marginal tax rates, exaggerated GDP growth less than poor regions, leading to artificially rapid convergence in official data. I propose a parsimonious model to rationalize this behavior. Globally, I find that convergence is likely underestimated in Africa and the Americas due to underreported growth in low-income countries.