"Expecting Floods: Firm Entry, Employment, and Aggregate Implications" (with Ruixue Jia and Xiao Ma), American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Forthcoming, [Paper] [NBER Working Paper 30250] [CEPR Discussion Paper DP17462]
Featured in: Forbes
Using county-level and ZIP-code-level data from the United States during 1998 – 2018, we document: (i) Increased flood risk has a large negative impact on firm entry, employment, and output in the long-run; and (ii) flood events reduce output in the short-run while impact on firm entry and employment is limited. We then develop a quantitative spatial model to characterize how flood risk shapes firms’ location choices and employment. We find that flood risk reduced US aggregate output by 0.53 percent in 2018, 23 percent of which stemmed from direct damages and 77 percent from long-run adjustments of firms and workers.
"Investor Origin and Deforestation: Evidence from Global Mining Sites" (with Wei You and Ran Goldblatt), Review of Economics and Statistics, Accepted, [Paper]
Featured in: VoxDev
Does mining activity lead to deforestation? How does investor origin affect the environmental impacts of mining operations? We investigate these questions by estimating the causal impact of mineral price changes on deforestation near mining sites. Combining global mine property-level data with high-resolution satellite imagery on forest cover, we find a positive elasticity of deforestation to mineral price shocks. This elasticity is significantly lower when mine owners are from countries with higher income or better institutions, but it is not affected by host country characteristics. Evidence suggests that mine owners from higher-income countries induce different types of local economic activity.
"Do Resource Rents Drive Urbanization and Structural Transformation? A Global Analysis" (with Qing Huang and Wei You), Journal of Development Economics, 2026, [Paper] [STEG WP074] [Published Version]
This paper provides the first causal estimate of the impact of mineral price changes on the local population and sectoral employment shares in a global sample of cities. We find that increases in the prices of minerals extracted from nearby mines lead to local employment reallocation away from agriculture and primarily toward low-skilled services, without crowding out manufacturing activities. While the city population grows, there is limited evidence for mining booms driving large-scale urbanization. Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa exhibit exceptionally strong responses to mining booms. These results suggest that resource-led structural transformation could present a new development path for resource-rich developing countries.
"Labor Market Adjustment under Extreme Heat Shocks: Evidence from Brazil", Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2024, [Paper] [Published Version]
Despite ample evidence on the labor productivity impact of heat shocks, little is known about how heat shocks affect labor adjustment over time. This paper uses administrative employer-employee linked data from Brazil to examine margins of labor market adjustment to extreme heat. Tracking workers over time and across job spells, I find that quarterly heat shocks increase the probability of formal manufacturing layoffs. In the medium run, there is limited intersectoral and interregional reallocation, as well as a significant failure rate to reallocate back to formal sectors, indicating job transitional costs. Finally, the employment impact of heat shocks is larger for workers in more routine manual task intensive, less abstract occupations.
"Heterogeneous Firms under Regional Temperature Shocks: Exit and Reallocation, with Evidence from Indonesia", Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2024, [Paper] [Published Version]
Are less productive firms in developing countries disproportionately affected by climate change? Using firm-level data from Indonesia, I find less productive firms are more likely to exit the surveys when temperature rises. Second, there is relative output redistribution to the initially more productive firms. The results are consistent with a heterogeneous firm model with skill-biased production function, where heat disproportionately affects unskilled labor productivity. Finally, surviving firms switched to using more skilled labor and more imported inputs. These results illustrate how climate change affects firms of different initial productivity and how various margins of firm-level adjustment could mitigate such effects.
"Place-Based Green Industrial Policy and Labor Market Expectations" (with Shihan Xie and Xu Zhang), [Paper]
Despite their growing importance, little is known about how green industrial policies with place-based provisions shape expectations. We provide causal evidence on how such policies influence labor market beliefs and behaviors during the energy transition. Using geographically targeted surveys with randomized information treatments, we show that national policies with localized provisions, particularly the Energy Community Bonus Credit, significantly improve labor market outlooks, increasing expected earnings growth and job-search effort among unemployed workers. These effects are stronger in areas with higher energy-sector employment shares but are attenuated among Republican respondents and individuals who anticipate policy reversal. Uncertainty surrounding policy eligibility further dampens these responses. Overall, our findings illustrate that clearly communicated green industrial policies with place-based components can meaningfully shape expectations in energy communities, with policy credibility playing a central role in belief formation.
"Do Information and Communication Technologies Empower Female Workers? Evidence from Vietnam" (with Heiwai Tang, Yao Wang and Natalie Chun), Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Public Economics, [Paper]
We study the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) adoption on female employment outcomes in Vietnam using rich firm- and individual-level data. Our identification exploits exogenous variation in ICT access driven by geographic connectivity conditions and a nationwide network upgrade in 2007. We find that ICT adoption increases the female share of employment within firms, primarily through within-firm reallocation in the formal sector. We further document a task-based mechanism: ICT shifts labor demand away from routine and manual tasks toward social, customer-facing, and service-oriented activities, where women are more likely to have a comparative advantage.
"Extreme Temperatures and Low-Income Household Finance: Evidence from Payday Loans" (with Shihan Xie and Xu Zhang), Revise and Resubmit, Nature Communications, [Paper]
NBER Household Finance Small Grant
Featured in: the Guardian, Politico Pro, ABC7
Extreme temperature shocks, intensified by climate change, are increasingly frequent and severe. Yet their impact on household finances remains underexplored. Using loan-level payday loan data, we show that extreme temperature shocks lead to household financial distress, reflected in increased loan demand, reduced credit access, along with rising default rates. We investigate the mechanisms behind this distress using borrower income data and the differences between online and storefront lenders. In the absence of federal aid for such events, the unmet demand for high-cost credit and deteriorating loan performance highlight the need for targeted policy interventions.
"Lithium Mining, Water Access and Environmental Externalities" (with Clark Lundberg)