Hi, I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Southern California. My research focuses on public economics, health economics, and the economics of aging. I am on the 2025-2026 job market.

Research

Job Market Paper

Bundling Pension and Health Insurance to Mitigate Adverse Selection: Evidence from Land-Expropriated Farmers in China with Danli Shen and Xiang Zhang

Abstract: Starting in 2011, Zhejiang Province allowed land-expropriated farmers to voluntarily upgrade from low-premium, low-benefit pension and health insurance programs to high-premium, high-benefit employee schemes. Using administrative data from City C, we document evidence of adverse selection in both insurance programs. Leveraging an instrumental variable design, we estimate demand, average cost, and marginal cost curves to quantify the resulting welfare losses. We then develop a random-coefficient logit model showing that bundling pension and health insurance can achieve a Pareto improvement by enhancing risk pooling and mitigating adverse selection: healthier individuals favor pension insurance, while less healthy individuals prefer health insurance.

Work in Progress

1. Bundling Pensions and Health Insurance to Mitigate Adverse Selection: Evidence from China’s Laid-Off Workers with Danli Shen and Xiang Zhang
   [Abstract]

   An estimated 45 million workers laid off during China’s 1997 state-owned enterprise reform are now reaching retirement age. Under the current social insurance system, they face three choices for pension coverage (no enrollment, resident pension, or employee pension) and three parallel choices for health insurance (no enrollment, resident health insurance, or employee health insurance). This project examines whether adverse selection arises in this setting and whether bundling can mitigate it when individuals face multiple insurance options.
2. Social Pension and Marriage Market with Xiang Zhang
   [Abstract]

   We exploit the staggered rollout of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), a nationwide program providing modest, unconditional monthly benefits to rural residents aged 60 and above, as a quasi-experiment. By improving women’s long-term financial independence, the NRPS may reduce their reliance on men, making them more willing to exit unsatisfactory marriages or more selective in spouse choice. Using individual-level survey data, we find no significant effect on divorce, likely due to very low baseline rates (around 0.3\%), but we uncover broader marital responses: while the NRPS has little impact on women’s marriage rates, it significantly reduces men’s likelihood of marriage. This asymmetric effect suggests that improved financial security lowers men’s incentives to marry and worsens matching prospects for lower-quality men.
3. Mandatory Savings and Housing Demand: Evidence from the Housing Provident Fund in China with Xiang Zhang
   [Abstract]

   We examine the impact of the Housing Provident Fund (HPF), a mandatory savings program that provides subsidized mortgage loans, on household housing demand. Despite its goal of promoting homeownership, participation remains uneven, with only about 40\% of employees contributing, and local governments relying on informal administrative pressure rather than formal mandates to expand coverage. Using administrative data from a Chinese county between 2017 and 2022, I exploit quasi-experimental variation in HPF adoption by focusing on existing firms that joined the program in different years in response to government campaigns. Firms enrolling in adjacent years face similar policy environments and employee composition but differ in their workers’ exposure to the HPF, allowing for a clean identification of what I term the “HPF elasticity of housing demand”, the responsiveness of home purchases to institutional access to subsidized housing finance.
4. Left Out and Losing Faith: Political Trust and Exclusion from China’s Minimum Living Standard Guarantee with Ying Lu and Xiang Zhang
   [Abstract]

   We examine how exclusion from the Dibao program, the country’s primary means-tested cash transfer, affects trust in government. Under Dibao, households with income below the official threshold are entitled to transfers that fill the gap between their income and the minimum standard. Using nationally representative household survey data, we implement a fuzzy regression discontinuity design that exploits the eligibility cutoff under imperfect compliance to estimate the causal effect of Dibao on political trust. We then examine downstream effects, asking whether reduced trust in local government lowers participation in other voluntary social insurance programs, such as the New Rural Pension Scheme and the New Cooperative Medical Scheme.
5. Why Do Women Study Harder Than Men: A Perspective on Employment Discrimination with Sheng Qu and Xiang Zhang
   [Abstract]

   We examine whether women exert greater academic effort in college in anticipation of gender discrimination in the labor market. To test this hypothesis, we exploit the relaxation of China’s one-child policy as an exogenous shock to gender-specific employment expectations. The shift from one- to a two-child policy likely heightened employers’ concerns about women’s career interruptions, thereby increasing discrimination. We construct a shift-share instrumental variable for regional gender discrimination, where the shift is the national policy change and the share is the pre-policy local fertility rate and female employment composition. Linking this instrument to individual-level college academic records, we estimate how anticipated discrimination shapes women’s educational effort.
6. The Impact of China’s One-Child Policy on Women’s Lifetime Income
   [Abstract]

   We exploit the introduction of the one-child policy to examine how it postponed women’s age at first birth and, in turn, affected their lifetime income through the permanent wage drop commonly referred to as the child penalty.
7. How Land Expropriation Affects Farmers’ Labor Market Decisions
   [Abstract]

   I use nationally representative panel data to examine how expropriation shapes rural labor markets. Because land takings are determined by the government at the village level, they are exogenous to individual characteristics. Comparing individuals before and after expropriation with non-expropriated peers in the same village, I find that expropriation significantly reduces agricultural employment but has little effect on non-agricultural work. This reflects the fact that older individuals, who dominate agricultural activities, are less likely to transition into other sectors.
8. From Home to Classroom: The Educational Impact of Housing Demolition
   [Abstract]

   I study the causal effect of migration on children’s education using large-scale urban demolitions as an exogenous shock to household location. Exploiting variation in the timing and geographic targeting of demolitions as an instrument for migration, I compare displaced children with peers in nearby unaffected neighborhoods, thereby isolating the impact of involuntary migration from confounding factors.

Teaching

1. Introduction to Econometrics (Undergraduate), USC, Fall 2025
2. Principles of Macroeconomics (Undergraduate), USC, Fall 2024
3. Macroeconomic Analysis and Policy (Graduate), USC, Spring 2024
4. Financial Markets (Undergraduate), USC, Spring 2022
5. Time Series Analysis (Graduate), USC, Fall 2021
6. Big Data Econometrics (Graduate), USC, Fall 2021, 2022
7. Microeconomics I & II (Graduate), Tufts, Fall 2019, Spring 2020
8. New Institutional Economics (Undergraduate), ZJU, Spring 2017, 2018