Research
Publications
Garz, Marcel and Maiting Zhuang. 2024. “Media Coverage and Pandemic Behaviour: Evidence from Sweden.” Health Economics, 33 (6): 1319-1367.
We study the effect of media coverage on individual behaviour during a public health crisis. For this purpose, we collect a unique dataset of 200,000 newspaper articles about the Covid-19 pandemic from Sweden -- one of the few countries that did not impose lockdowns or curfews. We show that mentions of Covid-19 significantly lowered the number of visits to workplaces and retail and recreation areas, while increasing the duration of stays in residential locations. Using two different identification strategies, we show that these effects are causal. The impacts are largest when Covid-19 news stories are more locally relevant, more visible and more factual. We find larger behavioural effects for articles that reference crisis managers (as opposed to medical experts) and contain explicit public health advice. These results have wider implications for the design of public communications and the value of the local media.
Zhuang, Maiting. 2022. “Intergovernmental Conflict and Censorship: Evidence from China’s Anti-corruption Campaign.” Journal of the European Economic Association, 20 (6): 2540–2585.
[Teaching materials] [Replication files]
I study how Chinese newspapers report on the national anti-corruption campaign, by collecting a large-scale dataset of articles in print and corresponding social media posts. Despite greater reader interest, local newspapers underreport and deemphasise corruption scandals involving high-level officials from their own province. Underreporting is greater when a newspaper does not rely on advertising revenue and a corrupt official is well connected. City-level newspapers report less about corruption in their own city, but are more likely to report about corruption within the provincial government. I present suggestive evidence that this type of localised censorship can reduce the accountability of local governments.
Zhuang, Maiting. 2019. "Political Connections and Higher Education." Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, 27 (1): 67–97.
Do political connections affect investment in human capital? This paper studies the higher education decisions of politically connected and unconnected students during China’s economic transition. Using the sequential introduction of reforms, I show that economic liberalization increased tertiary educational attainment, as well as sorting of students into different degree types depending on family background. Students whose parents were members of the Chinese Communist Party selected into relatively less prestigious vocational colleges with lower admissions standards. In contrast, politically unconnected individuals responded to the higher skill premium following the reforms by studying harder to obtain more demanding and sought-after university degrees.
Working Papers
Protests, Social Media Hate Speech and WWII TV Dramas in China
R&R at the Journal of the European Economic Association
Why is ethnic hate so persistent after conflict? In this paper, I study the effect of entertainment media in reviving historical grievances. I document the importance of TV dramas about the Japanese occupation during WWII on modern Chinese TV, and show that they affect real-life behaviour and social media discourse. Exploiting high-frequency data and exogenous variation in viewership, I show that WWII TV drama exposure leads to more anti-Japanese demonstrations, labour disputes at Japanese firms, boycotts of Japanese goods and hate speech and nationalist sentiment on social media. This effect is driven by privately produced TV dramas, while overt government propaganda has little to negative effects. Entertainment media can increase the salience of historical grievances and the perceived social desirability of expressing nationalist sentiment.
Cohorts, Competition and Construction: Economic Performance, Land Expropriation and Bureaucrat Promotion in China - with Paul Dutronc-Postel (IPP, PSE)
We identify the causal effect of career incentives on bureaucrat performance by exploiting the ex-ante competitiveness of promotions. We build a simple theoretical model of bureaucrat promotion that generates testable empirical predictions. Using detailed data on the career histories of top officials in all Chinese cities between 1996 and 2014, we show that bureaucrats with fewer rivals for promotion have a greater likelihood of advancement and face stronger promotion incentives. We argue that this variation in the competitor pool is plausibly exogenous and show that it is uncorrelated with characteristics of the bureaucrats and the cities and provinces where they are placed. The pressure to be promoted within a short time frame leads local officials to adopt a strategy that relies on real estate investment and rural land expropriation, resulting in faster growth in construction and GDP. We present suggestive evidence that the same incentives result in lower investment in education, public transport and health. We corroborate our findings using survey and remote sensing data, and show that land expropriations are associated with adverse outcomes for expropriated individuals, with subsequent arrests of local officials, and with the emergence of "ghost cities".
Selected Work in Progress
From Registration to Representation: Mobilising Women Voters and Politicians in India - with Pamela Campa (SITE, SSE) and Jonathan Lehne (SITE, SSE)
[Abstract and slides available upon request]
Identity, Contact and Threat - with Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (EHESS/PSE)
[Abstract and slides available upon request]