Projects
The Intergenerational Impact of the Public Long-term Care Insurance Policy, Job Market Paper
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of the public Long-term Care Insurance (LTCI) program on child development within multigenerational households. Utilizing three-generation linked data from the China Family Panel Studies and leveraging the staggered rollout of the LTCI program in China, I find that LTCI improves grandparents’ health by 0.21 standard deviations and raises grandchildren’s latent cognitive-skill factor by 0.348 standard deviations. The gains are concentrated among children in families with greater long-term care needs and lower socioeconomic status. Mechanism evidence suggests that LTCI reduces three-generation co-residence, improves mothers’ earnings, and increases household investment in children through higher spending on extracurricular education. Incorporating these intergenerational gains into a marginal value of public funds calculation suggests that each yuan of net government expenditure generates 2.53 in private household benefits.
[Paper]
Educational Decisions in the Shadow of Cronyism: An Empirical Study of College Graduates in China, with Xiaofan Zhu (Revise and Resubmit at Economica)
Abstract: This paper investigates how inefficient political institutions, marked by rampant corruption and cronyism, shape students’ educational choices based on their political connections. Utilizing the recent anti-corruption campaign in China, we find that college graduates with cadre parents from more corrupt regions are more likely to pursue further studies after the campaign. The effects are more pronounced among students with a non-STEM major, lower academic performance, and more powerful political connections, and among males. The study of underlying mechanisms suggests a more equitable post-campaign employment environment, where connected students need stronger educational qualifications to remain competitive against their unconnected counterparts.
[Paper]
The Effect of On-campus Student Accommodation on Academic and Non-academic Outcomes, with Xuanyi Jin, Sujata Visaria, and Xiaofan Zhu
Abstract: We investigate the impact of on-campus housing on both academic and labor market outcomes among undergraduate students. To identify causal effects, we leverage the dormitory allocation policy at a leading public university in Hong Kong, where dormitory offers are issued to local applicants in a randomly determined order within commuting-time categories. We find that living in a dormitory reduces students’ yearly GPA by 0.12 points (0.18 standard deviations). There is also suggestive evidence that dormitory residents receive fewer job offers upon graduation. Time reallocation appears to be an important mechanism: dormitory residents visit the library less during the daytime and regular teaching weeks, shifting their visits toward nighttime and examination weeks. The GPA penalty is concentrated among residents whose roommates are all from the same year of study or school, consistent with social interactions with similar peers crowding out study time. Likewise, self-reported time-use data from first-year students show that dormitory residence is associated with more time on extracurricular activities and less time studying. Our findings highlight the need to empirically evaluate the impact of on-campus student accommodation in East Asian universities rather than assuming that the positive effects found in Western settings will automatically translate.
[Slides] [Paper]
Policy Papers
Impact of Cross-Border Migration on Gender Gap in Labor Force Participation in Latin American and Caribbean, with Manuk Ghazanchyan (IMF working Paper)
Abstract: Migration has been typically accompanied by persistently large gender gaps in labor force participation (LFP) rates within the Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) countries from 1990 to 2020. However, the impact of both emigration (moving abroad) and immigration (coming in to the host country), and their joint effect on gender gap in labor force participation in LAC remains to be explored. This paper fills this gap by using both country-level data across LAC countries and individual-level data within Colombia as a supplementary case study. Our country-level analysis of LAC countries from 1991 to 2019 reveals that emigration is associated with decreased labor force participation rates, particularly among women. Supporting these findings, and based on data on Colombia from 2017 to 2019, we found that remittances, serving as a proxy for emigration, are associated with reduced labor force participation, especially among less-educated, older, and informal-sector women workers shaped by structural barriers and policy gaps. The reduced LFP rates for all genders are also shown with the influx of Venezuelan immigrants (serving as a proxy for an immigration shock) in the Colombian case.
[Slides] [Paper]
In Progress
Gender Gap, Structural Change and Female Comparative Advantage, with Marc Dordal i Carreras
Abstract: This paper examines the decline in female labor force participation (LFP) in developing countries by linking structural change to female comparative advantage (CA). Our model predicts that female LFP decreases when women’s CA is concentrated in contracting sectors and increases when it shifts to expanding sectors. In many developing economies, the CA often resides in the shrinking agricultural sector. We validate the framework using Chinese census data, demonstrating its ability to explain regional female LFP variations and gender gaps in LFP, and further apply it to India to illustrate its broader predictive utility.