Working Papers:
Centralized Assignment Mechanisms and Assortative Matching: Evidence from Chinese Universities (Job Market Paper)
Abstract: The problem of student-college mismatch has been documented in the literature. Taking advantage of a unique large-scale policy experiment in China in 2013, in which a variant of the Boston mechanism was replaced by a variant of the deferred acceptance mechanism, this study compares the quality of assortative matching between student test score and college quality under the two mechanisms. In China, college admission is performed via a centralized matching process that is based only on one national standardized test, the Gaokao. Using administrative data from one province, I find that the restricted deferred acceptance reduces the number of over-matched students (low-scoring students attend high-scoring colleges) by 7.1 percentage points (or 57.2 percent), but increases the number of under-matched students (high-scoring students attend low-quality college) by 2.7 percentage points (or 9.8 percent) on average for students on the top tier based on the test score distribution. The effects are mainly experienced by students in the bottom 50 percent of the top tier. The increase in under-matched shares fades over time for men, but persists for women.
Publications:
Fertility and Labor Supply: Evidence from the One-Child Policy in China (Applied Economics, 51.9 (2019): 889-910)
Abstract: This study provides new evidence on the causal effect of fertility on maternal labor supply in rural China. I use firstborn sex as an instrument; in some parts of rural China couples are allowed to have a second child if their firstborn child is female. Estimates show that a second child reduces maternal labor force participation by 4.6 percentage points, labor supply intensity (hours worked conditional on employment) by 1.4 hours per week and monthly income by 54.5 Chinese Yuan (18.7 percent). Heterogeneity analysis shows that the labor supply of mothers whose husbands are rural-to-urban migrants is more sensitive to having an additional child, likely because they have more difficulty balancing farming and childcare. Conversely, labor supply is not reduced by fertility for mothers living in three-generation families, most likely because grandparents can provide both time and money to help with childcare. In contrast, fertility does not affect paternal labor supply.
Work in Progress:
Who Benefits from China's Higher Education Expansion Policy
Confidence and Gender: Evidence from College Admission in China