Lingwei Wu - Research

Political Movement and Trust Formation: Evidence from the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) (with Liang Bai), European Economic Review, Vol. 122, 2020. [pdf]

This paper examines the effect of political movement on trust formation, in the context of China's Cultural Revolution (1966-76), an episode that involved conflicts and non-cooperative behavior under moral dilemmas. Combining both county-level variation in revolutionary intensity and cohort-level variation in trust formation ages, we construct individual exposure to the revolution using a difference-in-differences strategy. Our findings indicate that individuals in counties with higher revolutionary intensity and of trust formation cohorts report significantly lower levels of trust more than three decades later. This effect is more pronounced for those more likely to have been targeted during the revolution as well as those with greater exposure to its early years (1966-71). The results are robust after accounting for the dynamic effects of pre-revolution socio-economic characteristics, an extensive set of region-specific cohort trends, placebo tests, and potential reporting bias.

The Shaping of a Gender Norm: Marriage, Labor, and Foot-binding in Historical China (with Xinyu Fan) [pdf], International Economic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, 2023.

UniCredit Foundation - Best Paper Award on Gender Economics 10th; Marginal Revolution

This paper analyzes the shaping of a costly gender norm – foot-binding in historical China. We present a theory which explains the rise of foot-binding, in response to a gender-asymmetric social mobility shock that dispersed men’s quality distribution in the marriage market. The theory characterizes the marriage market equilibrium and women’s competition strategies before and after the shock. Empirical evidence using archival data corroborates the theoretical predictions, that greater men’s social mobility opportunities encouraged foot-binding, and that greater cost of women’s labor discouraged foot-binding. The paper thus highlights that costly gender norms can be traced back to gender asymmetry in social mobility opportunities.

Political Conflict and Development Dynamics: Economic Legacies of the Cultural Revolution (with Liang Bai), Journal of Economic History, Vol. 83(4), 2023. [pdf]

As a multi-faceted socio-political movement in 20th-century China, the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) witnessed conflict and social upheaval. This paper investigates its economic legacies, utilizing county-level variation in revolutionary intensity, as measured by the number of resulting deaths. After constructing a county-level panel of industrialization (1953-2000), we use a generalized difference-in-differences strategy to estimate the revolution's dynamic effects on economic development. The results show that worse-affected counties performed at least as well during the pre-revolution periods, but were slower to industrialize afterwards. The effects were largest in 1982, and decline through 1990 and 2000. Further using individual-level census and survey data, and combining cohort and regional variation in revolutionary intensity, we find cohorts with more exposure are less likely to obtain higher education degrees, less likely to take up professional and entrepreneurial occupations.

Psychological Well-being of Only Children: Evidence from the One-Child Policy (with Albert Park) , The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, 2025. [pdf]

This paper examines the effect of growing up as an only child on individual psychological well-being. Using national survey data – the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we employ the Kessler-6 scale to measure psychological well-being. Considering family fertility decisions are made endogenously, we use the instrumental variable (IV) strategy using both regional and cohort variations generated by the One-Child Policy in China. Our results show that being an only child as a result of the One-Child Policy is associated with a higher level of psychological distress.

Risk Behaviors of Only-Child Parents: Evidence from the One-Child Policy in China (with Shu Cai, Yuyang Jiang), Reject & Resubmit Journal of Labor Economics, [pdf]

Outstanding Paper Award on China Health Economics and Development 7th Forum

This paper examines the impact of having only one child on parental risk behaviors in a society where children serve as the bedrock for elderly support. Using variation in the One-Child Policy in China, we find that elderly parents with one child consistently show more risk avoidance behaviors in both health and finance domains. Moreover, the effect is intensified where the children-for-support culture is stronger and buffered where institutional elderly support is better available. Lastly, only-child parents also show stronger risk aversion in preferences. Together, the study underscores the role of family structure in shaping individual risk behaviors and preferences.

Traditional beliefs matter in the marriage market: Evidence from zodiac compatibility in China (with Danyan Zha) [pdf]

We examine the impact of traditional beliefs on spousal matching in China, focusing on the role of the zodiac compatibility system, which predicts a couple’s potential compatibility into three types: good, bad, and neutral. Using observational data from the population census, we document that couples with bad compatibility are significantly less prevalent than those with neutral compatibility, while good compatibility has an insignificant positive effect. To shed light on the mechanism, we use an incentivized online survey experiment to elicit individual-level preferences on spousal matching over zodiac compatibility, where the findings are consistent with the observational analysis. Lastly, we also examine the cost of the culture, where the results show that individuals facing a “worse” marriage market regarding zodiac compatibility are more likely to remain single.

The Impact of Immigration on Social Trust of Natives: Evidence from the Mass Migration in China (with Shu Cai, Xiong Xiao), [pdf]

This paper examines the impact of immigration on natives’ social trust in the context of China’s mass internal migration. Combining individual-level information on social trust and county-level information on immigration rate, we employ the instrumental variable strategy and find that immigration has a significant negative impact on trust among native residents. The impact of immigration on trust is more salient for trust in weak ties than trust in strong ties, and from a compositional perspective, the impact of low-skilled immigrants is more salient than that of high-skilled immigrants. Analyses of mechanisms suggest that better public services can buffer the impact of immigration on trust.