About Me

I’m a third-year Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to Pitt, I obtained my B.A. in economics and B.S. in mathematics at Wuhan University. My CV is here. My email address is yuq23@pitt.edu.
My research interests lie in development economics, labor economics, and political economy. I’m also broadly interested in other applied research topics.
The pronunciation of my name can be found here.

Research

Publication

“Are More Children Better than One? Evidence from a Lab Experiment of Decision Making”
with Xun Li
China Economic Review, Volume 69, October 2021
[ Abstract ]

This paper examines the impacts of siblings on people's social preference, risk attitude and time preference with a data set from a large-scale lab experiment. Employing the variation of fine rates under One-Child Policy for excess birth in different regions as instrument to address the endogeneity of whether having siblings, we find that sibling's role mainly focuses on shaping people's social preference that subjects with siblings demand less as responders in ultimatum game and behave more cooperatively in sequential prisoner's dilemma. This conclusion survives through several robustness checks. Our further result suggests that more sibling interactions and less parental expectations are two potential mechanisms through which siblings play a role in making people more prosocial. Our findings point to a positive externality along with Two-Child Policy which is widely neglected in both policy evaluation and relevant theory such as quantity-quality theory, and provide implications for the fertility policy such as the recent Three-Child Policy in China and beyond.

Working Papers

“Government Land Sales as a Response to Negative Economic Shocks in China”
[ Abstract ]

How do local governments in China respond to negative economic shocks? I investigate this question by leveraging an institutional feature of China, where local governments own the land and obtain revenue from land sales. Using a shift-share design, I find that city governments use land sales for real estate development as a strategy to address negative economic shocks resulting from export slowdown. This strategy increases the government’s tax revenue from the real estate sector and boosts employment in the construction sector in the short run. However, in the long run, it also leads to higher real estate risks, as evidenced by an increased probability of homebuyers' protests at stalled construction sites due to developers' over-indebtedness. This land sales strategy is more prevalent in cities with newly-appointed leaders. More generally, I find that local governments use land sales to respond to aggregate shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than regional shocks, such as floods and the US-China trade war.
“The Shattered Iron Rice Bowl and Youth’s College Decision: Evidence from China’s State-owned Enterprises Reform”
[ Abstract ]

How would a public sector downsizing reform affect the educational investment of potential job market entrants? This paper empirically investigates this question through the lens of China's state-owned enterprises reform (SOE reform) starting in 1998, which led to a substantial reduction in SOE employment. Leveraging regional and cohort variations in the SOE reform, my difference-in-differences estimate shows that the SOE reform significantly increases the likelihood of high school graduates obtaining a college degree. I provide evidence that this increase in college attainment after the reform can be attributed to the SOE reform's impact on increasing the likelihood of college graduates being employed and the college wage premium. Furthermore, the increase in college graduates’ likelihood of being employed is observed in both the state and non-state sectors, while the increase in the college wage premium is primarily attributed to the non-state sector.

Work in Progress

“Industrial Labor Relations in Urban China”
with Weizheng Lai