Research

Abstract: This study uses a randomized experiment to examine the effectiveness of informational nudges about eyeglasses on middle-school students’ decisions to purchase glasses after developing myopia. With a sample of 8,808 low-income middle school students in China, the experimental results show that the short-term impact of wearing glasses on academic achievement (vs. long-term impact, social norm, or cost) is the most effective information for students. We also find heterogeneity in baseline belief, peer effects, as well as in how students with different characteristics respond to various types of information. The cost-benefit analysis demonstrates the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of nudges in improving academic outcomes. Our results provide novel evidence of the importance of precise, personalized informational nudges in improving students' educational input and academic achievement.

Presented at: AEFP (scheduled), 2024; AERA (scheduled), 2024; Peking University Summer School (Best Student Paper), 2023

Abstract: To relieve the strain on public school seats and mitigate competition for elite schools, Beijing introduced a school lottery that severed the link between housing and school assignments. Using housing transaction data from Beijing, we leverage the school lottery as a quasi-experiment to examine how school admission uncertainty affects parental decisions on housing choice. Our findings show that, while the school lottery reduced the school-quality premiums of  school district houses (SDHs), especially tier 1 SDHs, its impact on tier 2 SDHs was negligible. Besides, the lottery had heterogeneous effects in different school zonings. In zonings with less admission uncertainty, premiums for SDHs either increased or remained unaffected. These indicate that households, in response to admission uncertainty introduced by the lottery, tended to opt for SDHs with higher admission probabilities. This new pattern of school and housing choice limited the policy's effectiveness, which was an unintended consequence from policymaker's perspective.

Presented at: AEFP (scheduled), 2024; AERA (scheduled), 2024; Annual Conference of Labor Economics for Chinese Economists, 2023; Education Finance for Chinese Economists Under 40 (Second Prize Paper Award), 2023; Peking University Summer School (Best Student Paper), 2022