My research investigates the impacts of educational policy interventions across organizational, familial, and individual levels. Grounded in an evidence-driven approach, I begin by developing clear hypotheses about how policies may improve teaching, leadership practice, and student outcomes; design interventions to test these ideas in real organizational settings; rigorously measure their effects; and, when effective, identify pathways for sustainable, system-level implementation.
My Ph.D. dissertation builds on my prior research and addresses a longstanding question in the economics of education: How Does Family Educational Investment Depend on Children’s Academic Ability? An Experiment on Information Shocks, co-authored with Yi Wei, Yingquan Song, and Feifan Zhang.
Publications and Works Under Review
Teacher Quality:
“Combating Learning Poverty: Experimental Evidence on Improving Instruction Through Teacher Training, ” Xinjie Zhang, Lu Wang, and Xiaoyang Ye. Economics of Education Review. 109 (2025): 102729. [PDF]
The pedagogical strategy has become a local policy in English instruction.
Family Investment:
“Estimating the Treatment Effect Heterogeneity of Providing Performance Information in Education: A Causal Forests Approach”, Xinjie Zhang, Yi Wei, and Yingquan Song. Manuscript prepared for submission to Journal of Development Economics.
The evidence has informed the development of the local school report card policy.
Student Behavior:
“Information for Vision: Experimental Evidence on Nudging Low-income Students to Wear Eyeglasses,” Jiusheng Zhu, Xinjie Zhang, Yu Zhao, and Xiaoyang Ye. Revised and Resubmitted at Economics of Education Review. 115 (2026): 102835. [PDF]
The findings have been shared with the local government, and policy discussions are currently underway.
Working Papers
“How Does Family Educational Investment Depend on Children’s Academic Ability? An Experiment on Information Shocks,” Xinjie Zhang, Yi Wei, Yingquan Song, and Feifan Zhang.
“How Do Children Respond? Experimental Evidence on Providing Academic Performance Information to Parents,” Xinjie Zhang, Yi Wei, and Yingquan Song.