“Exploring the Impacts of Education Inequality on Income Inequality among American States” with Yue Yin, 2025, Review of Development Economics.
“When Economic Downturn Hits Bottom Workers: Labor Market Entry Conditions and Long-term Career Effects” with Tonglong Zhang, 2025, China Economic Review, 91, 102379.
“Digital Revolution and Lower-class Workers’ Job Quality: Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Broadband China Program” with Xiumei Wang and Famin Yi, 2024, China & World Economy, 32(4), pp. 146-178.
“The Impact of the Dialect Diversity on Rent-free Farmland Transfers: Evidence from Chinese Rural Household Surveys” with Shangpu Li, Biliang Luo, and Xiaodan Zheng, 2024, Land, 13(2), 251.
“Fertility Effects of Labor Market Conditions at Graduation” with Yue Yin, 2023, China & World Economy, 31(4), pp.120-152.
“Fast Internet and Welfare Effects in China” with Shamma Adeeb Alam and Xiumei Wang.
This paper examines the impact of fast internet on workers’ labor market outcomes and standard of living in China. Using a large-scale survey and the staggered rollout of the Broadband China Program, we provide quasi-experimental evidence on its welfare impact on domestic migrants. Unlike prior studies, we find that while fast internet did not affect employment likelihood, it reduced work hours and increased earnings, leading to higher consumption and savings. The benefits were largest for high-skilled workers and those in major cities. Greater macroeconomic development and a structural shift towards high-skilled jobs explain the effects.
“Why Land Titling is Always Hard: Land Reallocation and Path Dependence” with Tonglong Zhang, Liang Zhao, Yujin Pan, and Linxiu Zhang, Revise and Resubmit at Journal of Development Studies.
Securing property rights is critical for developing countries, yet the progress of many land titling reforms has been far from smooth. This study centers on China’s land titling program, seeking to elucidate why these reforms often encounter unexpected hurdles and providing empirical evidence addressing the role of path dependence in land rights insecurity. Utilizing nationally representative household-level survey data, our research reveals that the current progress/quality of China’s land titling efforts falls notably short of the central government’s objective. Further empirical analysis conducted at both household and village levels reveals the adverse effects of past land reallocations on current land titling implementations. This highlights the influence of path dependence in exacerbating land tenure insecurity and shaping the existing challenges encountered in land titling implementations.
“Delinking Social Identity from Rural-urban Stereotypes: The Labor Market Effects of Abolishing Agricultural Hukou in China” with Yue Yin, Revise and Resubmit at Journal of Regional Science.
Publicly revealing social identity can negatively affect individual behaviors of the excluded social group. Utilizing China’s hukou system reform, the abolition of agricultural hukou, this study estimates the labor market effects of delinking social identity (hukou) from China’s existing rural-urban stereotypes. Based on nationally representative micro-level survey data, we present robust evidence that abolishing agricultural hukou benefits agricultural hukou citizens under the old hukou system. Specifically, agricultural hukou residents who remain in rural areas (rural stayers) experience higher earnings and increased employment opportunities in the nonagricultural sector following the reform. Conversely, urban workers, including rural-urban migrants (with agricultural hukou) and urban incumbents (with nonagricultural hukou), face adverse employment shocks after the abolition of agricultural hukou. We explore potential underlying mechanisms, including improved access to better employment opportunities, intensified urban labor market competition, and strengthened rural-urban economic connections. These findings have significant policy implications and contribute to understanding the complex interplay between social identity, norms, and labor market outcomes.
“The Short- and Long-Term Obesity Penalty: Persistence and Heterogeneity in the Market for Obese Workers” with Yue Yin, Revise and Resubmit at Journal of Economic Issues.
This paper applies a step-wise estimation framework to shed light on the short- and long-term obesity effects on workers’ labor market outcomes. Empirical challenges including endogeneity of the obesity status, selection to the labor force, and individual fixed effects are addressed. Based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), this paper reveals robust evidence that female obese workers bear stronger negative wage effects of obesity when entering the labor market. From the long-term perspective, both male and female obese workers suffer from a persistent and worsening wage gap compared to nonobese coworkers. Among them, more educated workers with richer work experience are punished more heavily and gradually reduce their annual labor supply. Heterogeneous forms of the obesity penalty are also explored across workers’ races and industries.
“Buffer against Job Displacement? The Heterogeneous Earnings Losses across Parental and Sibling Characteristics” with Yue Yin, Submitted.
This paper examines the long-term impacts of job displacement on displaced workers’ annual earnings, utilizing longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The analysis reveals heterogeneous recovery patterns in post-displacement earnings, influenced by various parental and sibling characteristics, such as parental education, number of siblings, birth order, and sibling gender. The empirical results suggest that parental education acts as a proxy for unobservable human capital and labor market network support. Consequently, displaced workers with higher-educated parents or parents-in-law experience smaller long-term earnings losses. When considering the displaced workers’ own education, those with a middle level of education suffer the most significant earnings losses. These workers tend to accumulate more occupation- or industry-specific human capital compared to their less-educated counterparts, yet they are less able to transfer this capital to new jobs as quickly as highly educated workers. Regarding sibling characteristics, the estimated earnings effects are shaped by the positive impact of sibling support and the negative impact of family resource competition. Displaced workers with a small number of siblings, older siblings, or siblings only of the same gender tend to experience smaller earnings losses.
“The Dynamics between Research and Policy: Long-term Evidence from China’s Agricultural and Rural Sectors” with Tonglong Zhang and Mengna Zhang.
The interaction between academic research and policy is of fundamental importance both to the scientific ecosystem and the public interest. Focusing on China’s agricultural and rural sectors, this paper empirically analyzes the dynamic research-policy interactions since its 1978 economic reform and provides a new perspective to review China’s economic success in its economic “take-off” period. Based on an event-study framework, this study yields robust evidence that research and policy maintain positive interactions (“Research Shapes Policy” or “Co-production”). Nearly 75% of policies were promulgated based on academic research, and 71% of them were continuously studied by researchers. At the same time, we notice an increasing tendency of “Policy Shapes Research” or “Autonomous Spheres” in the latest stage between 2008 and 2020, especially the policy-dominant “Policy Shapes Research”, which indicates a weakening role of research in leading the policy-making process. Possible reasons for the dynamic research-policy relationship and implications are also provided.
“Economic Fluctuations and Fertility of Developing Countries’ Workers” with Mengna Zhang.
“Children’s Education and Parental Health: Evidence from China’s Higher Education Expansion Program” with Yue Yin.
“County Clustering and Implications for Policy Design: An Unsupervised Machine Learning Approach” with Yue Yin.