Title: A Mixed Blessing: The Unintended Consequences of Social Welfare Policies on Child Development

Speaker: Chao Liang, Shandong University

Time: 2026/1/22 10:00-11:30

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Retirement as a Portfolio Turning Point: Evidence from China’s Statutory Retirement Age

Speaker: Wei Huang, Peking University

Time: 2026/1/12 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Publishing Social Science in Nature Journals

Speaker: Lingxiao Yan, the senior editor at Nature Climate Change

Time: 2025/12/30 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Speaker: Marc Chan, University of Melbourne

Title: The Family Multiplier:Understanding Delinquency and Parent-Adolescent Interactions

Time: 13:30-15:00, December 29, 2025 (Beijing Time, GMT + 8)

About the speaker:

Marc Chan is Professor of Econometrics at the University of Melbourne. His research develops and applies structural econometric methods to address policy-relevant questions in labour economics and public finance. He is particularly interested in modeling dynamic decision-making under uncertainty, equilibrium effects, and heterogeneity in behavioral responses. His recent work includes dynamic models of welfare participation, job search and matching, human capital accumulation, and family decision-making; estimation techniques for heterogeneous agents and hyperbolic discounting; and methodological advances for program evaluation in the presence of stochastic trends. On the empirical side, Professor Chan has examined the impacts of welfare reform, minimum wages, child care, and retirement savings incentives, and has contributed to the design and evaluation of tax-transfer systems. His work provides tools for simulating counterfactual policies and understanding distributional impacts. His research has appeared in leading journals, including Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, Quantitative Economics, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Health Economics, and Annual Review of Economics. He completed his Ph.D. in Economics from Johns Hopkins University.

Speaker: Chao Fu, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Title: Equity-Efficiency Implications of Output-Based College Resource Allocation

Time: 10:00-11:30, December 29, 2025 (Beijing Time, GMT + 8)

About the speaker:

Chao Fu is the Mary Claire Aschenbrenner Phipps Distinguished Chair of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her broad research area is empirical microeconomics that combines economic theories and econometrics tools to study policy relevant questions. Her research covers a wide range of topics, including education, urban policing, worker training, post-disaster reallocation and health insurance systems. A common theme of her research has been evaluating policy impacts from an equilibrium perspective.

Title: Fiscal Pressure, Administrative Penalties and City's Business Environment

Speaker: Wei Tang, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics

Time: 2025/12/22 13:30-15:00

Venue: 406 Zengxianzi Science Building

Title: Can the Urban Poor Avoid Flood Risks? The Case of Cape Town, South Africa

Speaker: Thomas Monnier, Hitotsubashi University

Time: 2025/12/23 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Flatten the Curve: Effects of Geotagging on User Engagement in Weibo Hashtags

Speaker: Ao Wang, University of Warwick

Time: 2025/12/24 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Inference for Nonlinear Endogenous Treatment Effects Accounting for High-Dimensional Covariate Complexity

Speaker: Qingliang Fan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Time: 2025/12/25 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Locating the Garden of Eden: Transportation Infrastructure and Marriage Dynamics in China

Speaker: Ze Song, Nankai University

Time: 2025/12/26 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Local Projections, VAR, and Impulse Responses

Speaker: Ke-Li Xu, Indiana University

Time: 2025/12/15 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Unconditional Randomization Tests for Interference

Speaker: Liang Zhong, The University of Hong Kong

Time: 2025/12/08 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: The Spill-back and Spillover Effects of US Monetary Policy: Evidence on an International Cost Channel

Speaker: Xiaofang Dong, Xiamen University

Time: 2025/12/04 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Aging in a Dual Economy: Urban Aging, MassiveMigration, and Agricultural Development

Speaker: Junsen Zhang, Zhejiang University

Time: 2025/11/30 11:30-12:30

Venue: 2F, International Conference Hall, Zeng Xianzi Science Museum

About the speaker:

Junsen Zhang is a globally renowned Chinese economist whose research focuses on labor economics, development economics, and the Chinese economy. He is currently a Senior Professor of Humanities at the School of Economics, Zhejiang University, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a recipient of the 17th (2016) Sun Yefang Economic Science Award and the 2020 Zhang Peigang Development Economics Award.

His research focuses on labor economics, development economics, and the Chinese economy. He is dedicated to studying the economics of social issues, including crime, fertility, marriage, education, intergenerational transfers of payments, gender discrimination, and elderly care. He also specializes in macroeconomic issues related to families, such as population aging, social security, and economic growth.

He has published over 130 papers in internationally renowned journals, including 5 in the Journal of Political Economy, 1 in the Review of Economic Studies, and others in the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of International Economics, the International Economic Review, and the Economic Journal.

Title: Banking and Innovation: Evidence from the Industrial Revolution

Speaker: Jinlin Wei, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Time: 2025/11/27 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Forecasting GDP Growth Rates Using Accounting Earnings:A Large Panel Micro Data Approach

Speaker: Yongmiao Hong, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Time: 2025/11/29 16:00-17:00

Venue: 406 Zengxianzi Science Building

About the speaker:

Hong Yongmiao is a senior researcher at the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science and the Dean of the School of Economics and Management at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also an Academician of the World Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association, a Senior Fellow of the Asian Bureau of Financial and Economic Research, and the Vice Chairman of the Steering Committee for Guidance in Economics Major Teaching in Higher Education Institutions. He previously served as Chair Professor of Economics and International Studies and Professor of Statistics at Cornell University, and President of the Chinese Economist Society.

His research areas include econometrics, time series analysis, financial econometrics, and statistics. He has published over 180 articles in leading Chinese and English journals such asAnnals of Statistics, Biometrika, Econometrica, Journal of American Statistical Association, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Royal Statistical Society B, Management Science, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Review of Financial Studies, Economic Research Journal, Journal of Management World, China Industrial Economics, Journal of Management Science and Engineering, and Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

He has also published several books in Chinese and English, including Python Economic Big Data Analysis, Probability Theory and Statistics, Advanced Econometrics, Probability and Statistics for Economists, and Foundations of Modern Econometrics: A Unified Approach. He was listed as a Highly Cited Chinese Researcher in Economics/Statistics by Elsevier for 11 consecutive years from 2014 to 2024 and received the first prize of the National Teaching Achievement Award for Higher Education (Undergraduate) in 2022.

Title: The Economics of Heritage: How Historic Buildings Shape China's Housing Market and Urban Development

Speaker: Xiaofang Dong, Xiamen University

Time: 2025/11/17 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Micro Shocks and Macro Fluctuations in the Information Network

Speaker: Minghao Li, Peking University

Time: 2025/11/21 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Fiscal Thinking for the 15th Five-Year Plan

Speaker: Wei Lü, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics

Time: 2025/11/24 10:00-11:30

Venue: 323 Zhonghui Building

About the speaker:

Lü Wei is the former president of Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, a Distinguished Professor, and a doctoral supervisor in the School of Economics. He also served as the eighth convener of the subject consultative group of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council (Applied Economics) and the vice president of the Society of Public Finance of China. He was selected as a National “Ten Thousand People Plan” Leading Talent in philosophy and social sciences, a member of the “Four Batches” of cultural figures selected by the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, and a national-level candidate for the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's New Century Talents Project.

His main research areas include fiscal theory and policy, and China’s economic reform and development. His research has been published in journals such as Social Sciences in China, Economic Research Journal, Journal of Management World, China Economic Quarterly, China Industrial Economics, Finance & Trade Economics, People’s Daily, Guangming Daily, and Economic Daily.

He served as the chief expert for Major Projects under the National Social Science Fund of China and as the project leader for a project supported by the State Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. He has received numerous awards, including the National Teaching Achievement Award for Higher Education (Postgraduate), the Outstanding Scientific Research Achievement Award for Higher Education Institutions (Humanities and Social Sciences), and the Liu Shibai Economics Prize.

Title: Bridging the Divide: Infrastructure Investment, Network Reconstruction, and Urban Economic Growth

Speaker: Jindong Pang, Wuhan University

Time: 2025/11/12 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: The Effects of Ambient Air Pollution and Pollution Exposure on Inattention

Speaker: Jinhua Zhao, Cornell University

Time: 2025/11/05 10:00-11:30

Venue: 323 Zhonghui Building

About the speaker:

Jinhua Zhao is the David J. Nolan Dean and Professor of Applied Economics and Policy at the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University. He served on the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board as well as the Air, Climate and Energy Committee of EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors. He was a co-editor of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and served on the editorial boards of JEEM, Review of Development Economics, Annual Review of Resource Economics, and Frontiers of Economics in China. He is currently on the editorial committee of Review of Environmental Economics and Policy. He conducts research in the broad area of environmental and resource economics, with special interests in global climate change, environmental regulation, technology adoption, dynamic decision making under uncertainty, and China’s environment. His publications have appeared in leading academic journals including Science, Economic Journal, International Economic Review, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Public Economics, JEEM and American Journal of Agricultural Economics. His research projects have been funded by US National Science Foundation, US Department of Agriculture, US EPA and NASA.

Title: Regional Competition and the Government-Market Relationship with Chinese Characteristics

Speaker: Li-an Zhou, Peking University

Time: 2025/11/03 10:00-11:30

Venue: 323 Zhonghui Building

About the speaker:

Li-An Zhou is Boya Chair Professor of Applied Economics at Guanghua School of Management at Peking University. Dr. Zhou received his BA and MA in economics from Peking University, and his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. He joined Gunaghua as an Assistant Professor in 2002 and became a full Professor in 2010. His research interests include political economy, industrial organization, economic development, and Chinese economy. Dr. Zhou has published papers in economics and management journals including American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Economic Journal, Management Science, Journal of Economic History, and Strategic Management Journal. He is also the author of the book Incentives and Governance: China's Local Governments (Cengage Learning, 2010).

Title: Environmental Economic Management Research Cases Based on Social Computing

Speaker: Shouyang Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Time: 2025/10/30 14:30-16:00

Venue: 406 Zengxianzi Science Hall

About the speaker:

Shouyang Wang is currently a Professor at the School of Economics and Management of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, a position he has held since 2000. His research focuses on decision analysis, financial management, logistics and supply chain management, economic analysis and forecasting, and policy analysis.

He has won the first prize of Scientific and Technological Progress Award (Natural Science Award) at the ministerial and provincial-level 4 times, the second prize 6 times, and the third prize 3 times. He has won many other prizes at home and abroad, including the Fudan Management Excellence Award and the Jr. Scott Award. Shouyang Wang is selected as an Academician of the World Academy of Sciences, Academician of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences, Distinguished Researcher of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Distinguished Professor of the Yangtze River Scholars Program of the Ministry of Education, a winner of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, and Director of the Center for Forecasting Science. 

Title: Structure and Growth: Challenges and Opportunities for the Chinese Economy

Speaker: Ming Lu, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Time: 2025/10/24 10:00-11:30

Venue: 323 Zhonghui Building

About the speaker:

Ming LU is Distinguished Professor of Economics, Director of Shanghai Institute for National Economy (SHINE), and research fellow of China Institute of Urban Governance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.  He is appointed as a member of the National 15th Five Year Plan Expert Committee and a member of the Shanghai Decision Making Advisory Committee. He worked as a professor at Fudan University, and as a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He has consulted for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. His research covers regional and urban-rural development, labor economics and Chinese economy. Recently, his work evaluates the urban and regional development policies, and their effects on resource allocation and economic sustainability from a perspective of spatial political economics.

Title: Difference-in-Differences Meets Synthetic Control: Doubly Robust Identification and Estimation 

Speaker: Haitian Xie, Peking University

Time: 2025/10/11 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Speaker: Qingyuan Li, Wuhan University

Title: ESG Mandatory Disclosure, Differentiated Regulation and Regional Economic Growth

Time: 14:30-15:30, October 22, 2025 (Beijing Time, GMT + 8) 

About the speaker:

Qingyuan Li is currently a professor at the Economics and Management School of Wuhan University.

Title: Quitting Behavior of Chinese Gig Manufacturing Workers: Virtual and Offline Peer Effects

Speaker: Dandan Zhang, Peking University

Time: 2025/10/13 10:00-11:30

Venue: 323 Zhonghui Building

Title: The Impact of Sanctions on International Trade: Evidence from CoCom’s Export Control 

Speaker: Boxiao Zhang, Renmin University of China

Time: 2025/10/10 10:00-11:30

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: AI and Enterprise Innovation Model

Speaker: Ying Fang, Xiamen University

Time: 2025/09/27 9:30-11:00

Venue: 323 Zhonghui Building

Title: Is Population Aging Inevitable?

Speaker: Junjian Yi, Peking University

Time: 2025/09/23 10:00-11:30

Venue: 323 Zhonghui Building

Title: Stabilized Latent Group Structure Identification for Panel Data: A Tuning-free Approach

Speaker: Xingbai Xu, Xiamen University

Time: 2025/09/18 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Risk and Time Preferences of Couples in a General Population

Speaker: Hong Il Yoo, Loughborough University

Time: 2025/08/25 10:30-11:30

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Speaker: Klaus F. Zimmermann, Free University of Berlin

Title: How to Publish in International Journals

Time: 10:00-11:300, July 8, 2025 (Beijing Time, GMT + 8) 

About the speaker:

Prof. Dr. Klaus F. Zimmermann is Co-Director POP at UNU-MERIT, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at Bonn University and President of the Global Labor Organization (GLO). Honorary Professor of the Free University Berlin (since 2001), Honorary Professor of the Renmin University of China in Beijing (since 2006),  Honorary Professor of Maastricht University (since 2016) and Honorary Professor of Lixin University in Shanghai (since 2019). He is, among other things, a member and a Senator of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (chairman of Section 25 Economics and Empirical Social Sciences), a member of the Academia Europaea (the European Academy of Sciences) and a member of the Regional Science Academy. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Population Economics (since 1988). 

Speaker: Joshua Angrist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Title: Intentions are Good but Instrumental Variables is Better: Rescuing Real-World Randomized Trials

Time: 10:00-11:00, July 7, 2025 (Beijing Time, GMT + 8) 

About the speaker

Joshua Angrist is the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT, a co-founder and director of MIT's Blueprint Labs, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Angrist taught at Harvard and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before coming to MIT in 1996. Angrist received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1982 and completed his Ph.D. in Economics at Princeton in 1989. 

Angrist and his collaborators develop and study innovative ways to harness the power of natural experiments to answer important economic questions. These new econometric tools help social scientists and policy-makers discover the causal effects of individual choices and government policy changes. 

Angrist received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2021 (with Co-Laureates Guido Imbens and David Card). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and has served on many editorial boards and as a co-editor of the Journal of Labor Economics.  

In addition to scholarship and teaching, Angrist and Steve Pischke co-authored Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion and Mastering 'Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect. 

Title: Intergenerational Persistence of Health and Earnings

Speaker: Kai Zhao, University of Connecticut

Time: 2025/06/27 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Office Space Segmentation and the Abundance Premium

Speaker: Liang Peng, Pennsylvania State University

Time: 2025/06/23 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Reputation, Reputation, Reputation! Evidence from Academic Journals

Speaker: Wei Zhou, Hunan University

Time: 2025/06/16 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Bank Expertise and Structural Transformation

Speaker: Gang Zhang, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business

Time: 2025/06/10 10:00-11:30

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Childbirth and Welfare Inequality: The Role of Bargaining Power and Intrahousehold Allocation

Speaker: Naijia Guo, The University of Hong Kong

Time: 2025/06/04 10:30-12:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: The Recession Shapes of Regional Evolution

Speaker: Yunjong Eo, Korea University

Time: 2025/06/06 10:00-11:30

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Taking Away the Sting: China’s Selective Exclusion of Retaliation Tariffs against the US

Speaker: Chao Fang, Zhejiang Gongshang University

Time: 2025/06/06 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Cross-border Spillover Effects of Dams

Speaker: Yu-Hsiang Lei, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Time: 2025/05/22 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Degree-Weighted Social Learning

Speaker: Yiqing Xing, Peking University

Time: 2025/05/19 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Political Selection After Regime Change: Elite Recruitment in Early Qing China

Speaker: Peiyuan Li, Duke Kunshan University

Time: 2025/05/16 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: The Cultural Consequence of Historical Institutional Integration

Speaker: Jianan Li, Xiamen University

Time: 2025/05/16 10:00-11:30

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Subsidized Credit Supply and the Housing Market: Evidence from the Housing Provident Fund System in China

Speaker: Keyang Li, University of International Business and Economics

Time: 2025/05/14 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Occupational Dynasties and Economic Development

Speaker: Martin Shu, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

Time: 2025/05/12 10:00-11:30

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Title: Affirmative Action and Long-Term Financial Disparities: Evidence from Chinese Ethnic Minorities

Speaker: Teng Li, Sun Yat-sen University

Time: 2025/05/09 10:00-11:30

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Abstract

The college entrance examination (CEE) bonus point policy for ethnic minorities in China represents one of the largest affirmative action initiatives globally. Yet, its long-term effects remain largely unexplored. Using a unique dataset (de-identified individuals) that links administrative records of college entrance exam participants with their bank card transaction data 10-20 years later, we examine the policy’s long-run implications.

Title: When Rumors Meet Reality: The Impact of “Dust Floor” Myths and Pollution Events on Housing Prices

Speaker: Xiao Wang, Hunan University

Time: 2025/05/08 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Abstract

Housing prices respond to environmental risks in local neighborhoods when information about the risks is well disclosed to the market. Most often, the information disclosure is through official channels such as government regulatory announcements and pollution monitoring data. However, when official information is delayed or incomplete, informal signals such as rumors can play a substantial role in shaping public perceptions of environmental risks. This paper studies the response of housing prices to a “dust floor” rumor, concerning housing units located on the 9th to 11th floors of a building to experience higher exposure to air pollution. We employ a triple-difference strategy to analyze how interactions between the rumor and visible environmental events - sandstorms - affect the prices of condo units on floors 9 to 11, relative to those on adjacent floors. The analysis draws upon micro-level housing transaction data of newly-built and resale condominums in Beijing, China from 2015 to 2023. Our results reveal that the rumor on environmental risks alone does not significantly distort housing prices, but when coupled with sandstorm events, it leads to a 3.5% price reductions for the rumor-affected housing units. We also observe a stronger price effect of the rumor on lower-priced houses. Preliminary analysis on the rental housing market shows no effect on rental price. 

Title: Childbearing Age and the Shadow Mommy Effect on Hiring: A Large-scale Field Experiment

Speaker: Li King King, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong

Time: 2025/04/29 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Abstract

This study examines the shadow mommy effect-discrimination against women of prime childbearing age in the labor market. We sent fabricated CVs to 35,713 genuine job advertisements in the IT, accounting, and HR sectors across four major cities in China, accurately simulating real job-seeking conditions. Our findings reveal that women of prime childbearing age face disadvantages in the job search process, even when their maternal and marital status is not disclosed. The impact of this effect varies by occupation, firm ownership, and location. Our results suggest that employers’ decision biases are largely shaped by the intersection of gender and age perceptions. Societal expectations of motherhood intensify concerns about the costs of gendered parental roles, perpetuating the shadow mommy effect.

Title: Understanding Expectations in Job Search: Subjective Duration Dependence, Aggregate Labor Market Shocks and Overreaction

Speaker: Qiwei He, University of Edinburgh

Time: 2025/04/30 10:30-12:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Abstract

Unemployed job seekers might worry about their chances of finding a job, especially when they remain unemployed for longer or labor market conditions turn out different than expected. Based on multiple survey samples, we find that job seekers anticipate a significant decline in their job-finding probability with an additional month of unemployment. However, they adjust their job-finding probabilities upward (downward) when the aggregate unemployment rate is unexpectedly low (high). Evaluated with a quantitative job search model, subjective job-finding probabilities substantially overreact to aggregate labor market conditions. These beliefs have the potential to offset a substantial part of the negative consequences of moral hazard in job search.

Title: Beyond Lost Earnings: Job Displacement and the Cost of Commuting

Speaker: Yige Duan, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Time: 2025/04/21 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Abstract

We study the impact of job displacement on an important non-wage attribute of subsequent jobs: the commuting cost between home and work. Using geo-referenced employee-employer data in Germany, we show that displaced workers take up new jobs that require longer commuting by 23.1 percent (3.38 kilometers). The effect declines over time as workers change to jobs closer to their homes. Estimating an on-the-job search model with heterogeneous firms and commuting distances, we find a German worker incurs commuting costs of 20.2 euros per day. Thus, longer commuting exacerbates the total cost of job displacement by one-fifth of the wage losses.

Speaker: Donald Davis, Columbia University

Title: Segregation, Spillovers, and the Locus of Racial Change in American Cities

Time: 10:00-11:30, April 24, 2025 (Beijing Time, GMT + 8) 

About the speaker:

Donald R. Davis is the Ragnar Nurkse Professor of Economics at Columbia University. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley and his PhD in Economics at Columbia. He previously held the positions of Assistant and Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard University before returning to Columbia. His research ranges over international trade, economic geography, economic development, and urban and regional economics. He has served on the editorial boards of the American Economic Review, the Journal of International Economics, and the Journal of Urban Economics. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a past President of the Urban Economics Association. 

Title: Too Much But Never Enough: Administrative Capacity and Backlashes to State-building in Medieval Japan 

Speaker: Weiwen Yin, University of Macau

Time: 2025/04/11 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Abstract

How does state-building fail? Existing scholarship emphasizes both territorial reach and administrative capacity as keys to state-building, but these dimensions do not always progress in tandem. We argue that when territorial penetration outpaces administrative capacity, it will generate governance burdens that the state is ill-equipped to manage, ultimately fueling unrest. We test this argument in Japan under the Kamakura Shogunate (1185-1333). In preparation for the Mongol invasions, the Shogunate expanded direct rule into previously autonomous regions, despite its own underdeveloped bureaucratic infrastructure. Our difference-in-differences analyses show that this effort triggered rebellions against the Shogunate, identifying increased governance burdens as the key mechanism. These centrifugal forces culminated in long-term state decay, evidenced by the proliferation of castles after the Shogunate’s collapse particularly in those regions. Our findings highlight the conundrum of premature state-building: without sufficient administrative capacity, efforts to strengthen central authority can paradoxically weaken the state’s long-term viability.

Title: An Impossible Unity? The Effects of International Monetary Policy on Chinese Treasury Yields

Speaker: Wei Li, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics

Time: 2025/03/28 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Abstract

This paper provides evidence that capital controls fail to insulate international spillovers of monetary policy shocks. Despite the limited openness of China's capital account, its Treasury yields are significantly affected by foreign monetary policy announcements and have changed constantly during the announcement windows, but barely respond to foreign non-monetary macroeconomic news announcements. Notably, Chinese yields closely track the announcement country’s counterparts during foreign monetary policy announcement windows but diverge on other days. We construct a model with imperfect information to explain the facts.

Title: Unintended Consequences of China’s Double Reduction Policy: Its Immediate and Intergenerational Impacts

Speaker: Guochang Zhao, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics

Time: 2025/03/27 13:30-15:00

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

Abstract

Like many East Asian societies, Chinese households increasingly are facing fierce competition in the education market. Students spend longer hours either at school or on homework, household spending on private tutoring has skyrocketed, while mental and physical health issues among teenagers have become more prevalent. To address this growing concern, in July 2021, the Chinese government launched the “Double Reduction” (DR) policy, aimed at reducing both students’ excessive school homework burden and after-school private tutoring. Using a tailored household survey, a constructed policy enforcement index, and a difference-in-differences strategy, this paper evaluates the policy’s impact. We find that the policy’s effects run counter to its goals. On average, it increases children’s private tutoring enrolment, raises household tutoring expenses, and boosts the time parents spend on schoolwork. Moreover, these effects are not evenly distributed: children from low-income households suffer the most, as higher tutoring costs reduce their private tutoring participation and lead to poorer academic performance.

Title: Choosing Between Information Bundles

Speaker: Menglong Guan, Penn State University

Time: 2025/03/21 9:30-11:00

Venue: ZOOM Meeting (Please scan the QR code below to join)

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study on how people choose sets of information sources (referred to as information bundles). The findings reveal that subjects frequently fail to choose the more instrumentally valuable bundle in binary choices, largely due to the challenge of integrating the information sources within a bundle to identify their joint information content. The mistakes in choices cannot be attributed to an inability to use information bundles. Instead, these mistakes are strongly explained by subjects’ tendency to follow a simple but imperfect heuristic when valuing them, which I call “common source cancellation (CSC).” The heuristic causes subjects to mistakenly disregard the common information source in two bundles and focus solely on the comparison of the sources that the two bundles do not share. As a result, choices between information bundles are made without adequately considering the joint information content of each bundle. Notably, CSC emerges as a robust explanation for the information bundle choices for all subjects, including those who make perfect use of information bundles to make inferences.

Title: Linear Models with Interval-Censored Variables

Speaker: David Pacini, University of Bristol

Time: 2025/03/20 17:00-18:30

Venue: ZOOM Meeting (Please scan the QR code below to join)

Abstract

This paper studies the problem of inference in a set identified problem defined by linear moment restrictions generated by multiple interval-censored variables. It applies to the case with interval-censoring of variables on both sides of a linear model as in our empirical application of interest concerning the relationship between risky assets and household wealth. We use the characterization of elements of the identified set developed by Bontemps, Magnac and Maurin (2011, Econometrica) as a condition about a dual convex auxiliary set. We construct a test procedure of this condition by minimizing the support function of this auxiliary set. We show how to regularize the test procedure when the minimization problem has a continuum of solutions. Furthermore, we show how this procedure extends to sub-vector inference in a natural way through duality again using a different regularization procedure. Although dependent on tuning parameters, asymptotically normal properties of the test statistic hold, and critical values need not be simulated. We derive weak conditions under which these properties are uniformly valid. Monte Carlo experiments evaluate the numerical performance of the novel inference procedure and compare it with existing ones.

Speaker: Richard Akresh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Title: Medium-term Impacts of Integrated Social Safety Nets: Cash Transfers, Information Meetings, and Home Visits for Child Development

Time: 10:00-11:30, March 11, 2025 (Beijing Time, GMT + 8) 

About the speaker:

Richard Akresh is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on children’s health and education. He has explored the impact of conflict on human capital and health for young children as well as the long-term and intergenerational consequences of exposure to war as a child. He has conducted randomized control trials of alternative ways to deliver cash transfers and early childhood development interventions to poor households in Africa to improve children's health and education. He is also interested in questions about the intergenerational transmission of shocks, household structure, and intra-household bargaining. He is a Research Associate of the NBER, a BREAD Research Affiliate, a Research Fellow at IZA, and a Senior Affiliate at HiCN.