Research

Abstract: This paper examines the formation of a specific non-cognitive skill – empathy – and its role in determining bullying behavior with a focus on social networks. The analysis centers on a parent-directed empathy-fostering intervention, which successfully increased empathy levels and reduced bullying among students. To disentangle the mechanisms underlying these findings, I develop and estimate a structural model of empathy development, network formation, and bullying decisions. The analysis reveals that 32% of the observed reduction in bullying is attributed to empathy-induced alterations in social networks. Policy counterfactuals show that social network information is valuable. Notably, targeting students based on popularity can lead to up to a 7.5% further reduction in bullying compared to targeting students randomly. Moreover, targeting bullies’ friends is more effective than targeting bullies directly. This insight holds promise for refining the efficacy of anti-bullying initiatives, which often focus more on bullies, and highlights the potential of reshaping social networks to mitigate violent behavior among adolescents.

Presented at: PacDev 2023 conference, Chinese Economists Society North American Conference, University of North Texas, Rice Economics Brown Bag Seminar, North America Summer Meeting of the Econometric Society, PhD-EVS Seminar, Economic Science Association Job Market Seminar, APPAM Fall Research Conference, Southern Economic Association Annual Meeting, Texas Economics of Crime Workshop, European Conference on Networks, Texas Development Economics Workshop, SEHO

Abstract: Empathy is often linked to morality yet rarely explored in relation to academic outcomes. This study conducted a randomized controlled trial to foster empathy in middle school students through a parental involvement program, tracking outcomes through graduation. The program successfully improved students’ empathy in the short run. We found that, in the long run, it led to a significant long-term improvement in academic outcomes, increasing the elite high school admission rate by 3.2 percentage points and decreasing the high school entrance exam dropout rate by 2.5 percentage points. Two mechanisms appear to drive these results: (i) the program (perhaps through improving empathy) reshapes students’ social networks and improves classroom environments, making them more supportive, and (ii) the development of other non-cognitive skills, especially improved mental health alongside empathy and parental involvement, which may enhance academic outcomes through cross-productivity.

Presented at: HCEO-IESR Virtual Summer School in Socioeconomic Inequality at Jinan University, SOLE 2022 Annual Meeting [SOLE], 2022 ESA Special Meeting by JILAEE, EEA-ESEM Milano 2022, Asian Meeting of the Econometric Society in China 2023, 2023 NBER Summer Institute, LSE Wellbeing Seminar

Abstract: This paper evaluates the Jumpstart Program (JSP), a parenting intervention implemented by a school district in the Houston area to enhance school readiness among economically disadvantaged three-year-old children. Unlike many early childhood programs typically tested in controlled research settings, JSP leverages existing school district resources for scalability and practical application. We conducted a three-year randomized controlled trial to measure the program’s impact on child cognitive outcomes, parental engagement, and mechanisms of change. The results indicate improvements in children’s performance on curriculum-aligned assessments and modest gains in general cognitive readiness as measured by the Bracken School Readiness Assessment. Furthermore, treatment group parents demonstrated increased reading frequency with their children, underscoring enhanced parental involvement as a crucial mechanism behind the program’s success. We employed a structural model to analyze both the direct effects of JSP and its indirect effects through changes in the marginal productivity of investments or preferences via habit formation. Our analysis concludes that 75% of the program’s impact is attributed to direct effects, while 25% is mediated through changes in habit formation in parental investments. Our research underscores the potential of scalable, real-world interventions to bridge socio-economic gaps in early childhood development and inform the design of effective educational policies.

Abstract: This study develops a new approach, grounded in the collective household model, to identify intrahousehold resource allocation and estimate the extent of joint consumption within extended families. Compared to traditional methods, this approach (i) accommodates endogenous living arrangement decisions and (ii) requires less restrictive data. Using nationally representative household survey data from China, I first document the importance of intrahousehold agreement in co-residence decisions: mutual agreement between spouses to live with the husband’s parents significantly increases the likelihood of postmarriage co-residence. This new approach is then applied to recover the individual-level resource shares for women, men, and the elderly, as well as the economies of scale. Results suggest that the elderly are allocated the least resource shares, and women tend to be more altruistic in consumption sharing than men. While co-resident households exhibit significant economic efficiency gains compared to nuclear households, these gains do not fully explain co-residence choices. The findings suggest that cultural factors continue to play a role in living arrangement decisions in contemporary China.

Presented at: 2022 AMES China conference, EEA-ESEM Milano 2022, 2022 AMES Tokyo conference, 2nd Workshop in Applied Microeconomics 2022-23, AASLE 2022 Conference

Abstract: How do intrahousehold property division laws affect children’s behaviors? This study answers this question by exploiting a unique quasi-experiment from China. In 2011, the Chinese Supreme court reversed a decades-long trend towards improved property rights for married women, altering property division upon divorce from an equal-division regime, which put women on an equal standing to men, to a title-based regime which left them at a clear disadvantage. On the one hand, this legal change may increase children’s undesirable behaviors (e.g., smoking, drinking alcohol, etc.) by negatively affecting parents’ investment in children’s human capital, family relationships, and parenting practices. On the other hand, the legal change may decrease children’s undesirable behaviors by increasing homes owned by children and improving parenting practices. We compare undesirable behaviors of affected and unaffected children before and after the legal change using a difference-in-differences design. We find that it decreased children’s undesirable behaviors in 2012 and 2014 by 4% and 7%, respectively. The reduction in children’s undesirable behaviors was particularly large among boys, children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and children whose parents had relatively high divorce propensity. The effect of the 2011 judicial interpretation was likely driven by increased child homeownership and improved parenting practices. Our findings have important implications on policies promoting asset building for children, particularly those with disadvantaged backgrounds. 

Presented at: Population Association of America 2021 Annual Meeting [PAA]

Abstract: Can enhanced broadband access create rural entrepreneurs and how? Analyzing a major subsidized telecommunications network rollout in China (2016 – 2018), our staggered difference-in-differences estimates show a significant increase in rural self-employment, especially among women who transitioned from salaried work. These effects are persistent and grow over time. Interestingly, the intervention also decreased out-migration and encouraged skilled individuals to return. This entrepreneurial shift, concentrated in non-service sectors, boosted total family income despite a decline in wage earnings. Our results suggest that enhanced broadband access can be a powerful tool for retaining talent and fostering female entrepreneurship in rural economies.

Abstract: The phenomenon of parents’ Middle-School Blues is widespread yet often overlooked. We find that parental mental health is “V-shaped” throughout children’s developmental stages, reaching its nadir during middle school. We then leverage data from a four-month parental involvement program on empathy and positive parenting conducted in Chinese middle schools. We find the intervention has a significant positive effect on parental mental health, measured by GHQ-12 score, by 17% of a standard deviation. The effect is large enough to help parents combat Middle-School Blues. We attribute the program’s effect on mental health to the improvement in parental skills, time inputs, and children’s non-cognitive ability. Through a mediation analysis, we find these three factors interact and account for over 62% of the total program effects, and that the improvement in parental skills is the key driver of promoting parental mental health. Finally, our program requires only $21.5 per class to prevent one depression incident and $18 to improve parents’ mental health by 10% of a standard deviation, suggesting the feasibility of scaling up. 

Presented at: University of Houston Brown Bag, SEA 2022 Annual Meeting, Atlanta Workshop on Public Policy and Child Well-being

Abstract: This research note re-evaluates the occupational health impact of Right-to-Work (RTW) legislation, incorporating recent developments in causal inference techniques. It is particularly urgent to understand this question in an era marked by an uptick in the adoption of anti-union legislation and increases in workplace fatalities and injuries. Using a state-year-level dataset spanning 28 years collected from multiple data sources, we apply an innovative generalized synthetic control method to overcome several limitations of the traditional two-way fixed effects approach to examine the effect of RTW laws on occupational fatal injuries as well as various other health outcomes. Robustness checks were also conducted using a wide range of alternative methods for two-way fixed effects adjustments. Inconsistent with findings from previous studies, we find null effects on occupational fatal injuries, as well as on all other health outcomes. Our findings highlight the importance of revisiting research questions using updated methodological tools.

Presented at: Population Association of America 2022 Annual Meeting [PAA]

Abstract: Social status is a key determinant of marital sorting patterns. This paper studies the role of the hukou system — a household registration system in mainland China that categorizes individuals into rural and urban groups — in shaping marital sorting patterns. Specifically, I evaluate a policy that granted men the same rights to transfer their hukou status to children as women. The policy significantly increased hukou intermarriages, particularly between rural women and urban men. By estimating a two-sided directed search and matching model, I find that the policy distorted the marriage market by increasing search frictions to a greater extent for rural men than for urban men. Highly educated rural men would have benefited the most if this policy had not been implemented, indicating that they suffered the most welfare loss, at least in terms of marriage outcomes. The findings underscore the importance of understanding the role of social status in shaping marriage markets and the impact of status-related policy interventions on welfare outcomes. 

Presented at: HCEO Summer School on Socioeconomic Inequality in Chengdu, SOLE 2021 Conference [SOLE], AASLE 2021 Conference [AASLE], Young Economist Symposium 2021, 2021 Symposium on Contemporary Labor Economics at Xiamen University 

Abstract: Research documents that parental beliefs influence early investments in children, which, in turn, determine early human capital and, eventually, other skills children acquire in later stages of the lifecycle, such as literacy. Our paper reports the results of an experimental evaluation of the LENA Start Program, a group- and center-based parenting program that teaches the science of early language development, models verbal interaction behaviors with children, and provides objective feedback to improve the early language environment. The intervention changes parental beliefs and impacts the quantity and quality of parental linguistic input.

Abstract: We examine the direct and indirect impacts of natural disasters on deposit rates of U.S. bank branches from 2008 to 2017. We capture the indirect impact by the spatial spillover effects of disasters, from branches directly exposed to such disasters to neighboring branches. We theoretically motivate our spatial framework by local competition for deposits among branches and provide empirical evidence consistent with this model. We find that indirect effects contribute to at least two-thirds of the total impact for deposit rate-setting branches. Rate-setting branches in affected counties, on average, raise their deposit rates on 12-month CDs by 1.5 basis points directly due to the disaster shock. However, there is an additional indirect increase of 2.7 – 4.3 basis points for all rate-setting branches, including those in adjacent but unaffected counties, due to the local geographical competition for deposits. We also confirm that the spillover effect occurs among branches across counties via an overlooked social connectedness. Moreover, and importantly, online and one-county banks are more likely to rely on the information channel embedded in the social connectedness effect in response to natural disasters.  Branches in less concentrated local markets also respond more to natural disasters and rate adjustments of neighboring branches. 

Presented at: 7th International Young Finance Scholars’ Conference, SEA 91st Annual Meeting, IFABS 2021 Oxford Conference, 2021 Financial Management Association Annual Meeting