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Welcome to my website. I am currently an Assistant Professor at Central University of Finance and Economics. My research interests are in macroeconomics and economic development.
Email: [email protected]
Curriculum Vitae
Email: [email protected]
Curriculum Vitae
Journal Articles
Skill Bias, Financial Frictions, and Selection into Entrepreneurship, with Ying Feng
Forthcoming, Journal of Development Economics
Forthcoming, Journal of Development Economics
Abstract: Financial frictions adversely affect productivity by discouraging entrepreneurship, which is often measured by the self-employed. This paper distinguishes different types of self-employment when studying this question. Using micro data for 77 countries from all income levels, we show that employers' labor shares are increasing with GDP per capita, whereas own-account employment (self-employed without employees) is decreasing. We also find almost universally negative selection on education into own-account status relative to wage workers and positive selection into employers. To quantitatively match these facts, we introduce skill-biased productivity progress across countries in an occupational choice model with financial frictions. Our model predicts an average of 19% output gains in low-income countries from removing financial frictions. In contrast, an alternative model with skill-neutral technological change cannot match the high own-account employment share in low-income countries, thus overestimating the output gains by 13 percentage points.
Within Marriage Age Gap Across Countries, with Ying Feng
Economics Letters, Vol. 210, 110190, January 2022.
Economics Letters, Vol. 210, 110190, January 2022.
Abstract: The age gap within marriage is one form of the gender gap. This paper uses micro data from 89 countries from all income levels to show that the marriage age gap decreases with development. We also show that this pattern is robust for both females and males after controlling for individual and country-level characteristics.
Working Papers
The Reversal of the Gender Education Gap with Economic Development,
with Ying Feng and Michelle Rendall
with Ying Feng and Michelle Rendall
Abstract: Using household surveys covering 83 countries of all income levels, we document that the gender education gap in low-income countries is strikingly large and that it narrows and reverses with economic development. To study the driving forces, we propose a three-sector model in which development features skill-biased structural change, gender-biased technological change (a reduced form of changing discrimination), changing marriage market, and varying levels of educational assortative matching. The model is parameterized to match contrasting labor market outcomes by education and gender groups and it does well in matching the patterns of the gender education gap we document. Counterfactual exercises show that skill-biased structural change explains most of the narrowing gender education gap across the development spectrum, whereas other mechanisms plays only a minor role.
Works in Progress
Abstract: Marriage rates worldwide have fallen in recent decades. We draw micro data from 216 surveys to document that marriage rates decrease with development across countries from all income levels. We find that one log point increase in GDP per capita is associated with a decline of 5 percentage points in the marriage rate. This magnitude is similar to the slope coefficients of time-series patterns within a country based on evidence from 76 countries. We show that demographic distributions of age, education, and urban population account for at most one-third of the cross-country slope of marriage on development. We then propose a simple model to emphasize the contributions of two exogenous factors, economic development and declining desired fertility, on the marriage-development relationship.
Marriage effect, Education, and Gender Difference, with Liyuan Dong
Aging, on the Job Learning, and Firm Dynamics