"I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy."

• The Unseen Pain of the Vietnam War: Long Term Effects of Agent Orange on Labor Market Outcomes 

(with Po-Yin Wong)

Journal of Population Economics

• Presented: Asian Economic Development Conference 2025 (Peking, China), 2025 World Congress of the Econometrics Society (Seoul, South Korea), German Development Economics Conference 2025 (Frankfurt, Germany), 30th Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (Bergen, Norway), Economics of Health and Human Capital (Royal Holloway Workshop).

Paper in one sentence: Agent Orange exposure during the Vietnam War has lasting, multigenerational impacts on education, employment, and earnings. 

• Regional bombs and public labour obligations 

(solo-authored, 2026)

International Public Management Journal

Paper in one sentence: War bombing has a U-shaped effect on public labour contributions: less at moderate exposure, more at extreme exposure.

• Ruixue Jia, Hongbin Li, The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao shapes China, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England (2025), p. 256, ISBN: 9780674295391

(with Nhat Minh Tran and Duy Khanh Hoang Dang)

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics

• A land of sages: A legacy of former elites and university professors in Vietnam 

(with Kiet T. Duong)

Explorations in Economic History, Volume 99, January 2026

Paper in one sentence: Regions with more imperial-exam elites long ago produce more professors today.

• Presented: Nordic Conference in Development Economics 2024 (Copenhagen, Denmark), YSI-EHES Economic History Graduate Webinar, Asian Economic Development Conference 2025 (Peking, China), 2025 World Congress of the Econometrics Society (Seoul, South Korea),  29th Annual ISNIE / SIOE Conference (Sydney, Australia). 

• Coverage: #Econhist papers Johan Fourie (mostly) admire

• Public Engagement: Tia Sáng ('The Spark'/'Light ray', Vietnamese science and technology magazine under the Ministry of Science and Technology)

• Time Preferences and Lunar New Year: An Experiment 

(with Tam N. Luong and Bryan S. Weber)

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, Volume 24, July 2024, Issue 4

• Presented: 2023 European Economic Science Association Meeting (Exeter, United Kingdom)

Paper in one sentence: Our experiment revealed that during the Lunar New Year, individuals showed increased patience only when wait times were framed in yearly increments.

• What Vietnam’s localized lockdown policy showed: It did not work and was too late (solo-authored, 2023)

Regional Studies

Paper in one sentence:  The number of infected cases is found to increase despite the lockdowns reducing visits to public areas.