Areas of Research
Population Health and Development Economics:
Note:
I consider myself primarily a development economist, with a passion for investigating the determinants of development and evaluating development policies. [Detailed exposures and outcomes are labeled for each project below.]
- Health, Wellbeing, and Disadvantaged Population
- Economic Development (Human Capital Investment, Rural Revitalization, Urban Vitality)
Note:
I consider myself primarily a development economist, with a passion for investigating the determinants of development and evaluating development policies. [Detailed exposures and outcomes are labeled for each project below.]
1. Health, Wellbeing, and Disadvantaged Population
"Maternal Preconceptional and Prenatal Exposure to El Niño-Southern Oscillation Levels and Child Mortality: A Multi-country Study", with Hongbing Xu, Vanessa Oddo, Espoir Bwenge Malembaka, Xinhou He, Qinghong Zhang, and Wei Huang (R&R at Nature Communications)
- Exposure: climate risks posed by ENSO
- Outcome: child mortality
Saizi Xiao, and Castiel Chen Zhuang*. "Measuring and Decomposing the Multidimensional Financial Wellbeing in Malaysia", Empirical Economics Letters, 23(4), April 2024.
- Exposure: demographic characteristics
- Outcome: financial well-being and its gaps
Zhihan Cui, Lu Liu, and Castiel Chen Zhuang*. "The Impact of the Removal of Zero-COVID Policies on Subjective Well-being: Evidence from a Digital World." Economics Letters, 229: 111189, August 2023
- Exposure: the removal of Zero-COVID policies
- Outcome: subjective well-being/mental health
Castiel Chen Zhuang, Jessica Jones-Smith, Sarah Andrea, Anjum Hajat, and Vanessa Oddo. "Maternal Precarious Employment and Child Overweight/Obesity in the United States", Preventive Medicine, 169: 107471, April 2023.
- Exposure: (maternal) precarious employment
- Outome: (child) overweight/obesity
Vanessa Oddo*, Castiel Chen Zhuang, Jessica Jones-Smith, Anjum Hajat, Jerome Dugan, Sarah Andrea, and Trevor Peckham. "Association between Precarious Employment and BMI in the United States." Obesity, 31(1): 234-242, January 2023. (Editors' Choice)
- Exposure: precarious employment
- Outcome: overweight/obesity
Hongbing Xu, Castiel Chen Zhuang* Xinpeng Guan, Xinghou He, Rongshan Wu, Tong Wang, Qinghong Zhang, and Wei Huang. "Associations of Climate Variability Driven by El Niño-Southern Oscillation with Excess Mortality and Related Medical Costs in Chinese Elderly." Science of the Total Environment, 851: 158196, December 2022.
- Exposure: climate risks posed by ENSO
- Outcome: elderly mortality; medical costs
Vanessa Oddo*, Castiel Chen Zhuang, Sarah Andrea, Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot, Trevor Peckham, Daniel Jacoby, and Anjum Hajat. "Changes in Precarious Employment in the United States: A Longitudinal Analysis." Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 47(3): 171-180, April 2021.
- Exposure: demographic characteristics
- Outcome: unequal changes in precarious employment
Yi Chen, Julie Shi*, and Castiel Chen Zhuang. "Income-dependent Impacts of Health Insurance on Medical Expenditures: Theory and Evidence from China." China Economic Review, 53: 290-310, February 2019.
- Exposure: participating in the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme
- Outcome: out-of-pocket spending
夏庆杰*,孙祁祥,庄晨:“中国经济转型时期性别工资差异分析”,《社会科学战线》,2015年第10期,第38-55页。
- Exposure: demographic characteristics
- Outcome: gender wage gap
秦雪征*,周建波,辛奕,庄晨:“城乡二元医疗保险结构对农民工返乡意愿的影响——以北京市农民工为例”,《中国农村经济》,2014年第2期,第56-68页。
- 全文转载于人大复印报刊资料《统计与精算》2014年第4期
- Exposure: participating in the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme versus participating in any of the urban medical insurances (i.e., the Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance or Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance)
- Outcome: willingness to return home
"Evaluating the Economic Impact of BKSS in Sarawak", with Saizi Xiao, Wong Chin Yoong, and Sharifah Nabilah binti Syed Salleh (half-baked working paper)
- Exposure: participating in the BKSS (a program targeting households with income in the bottom 40% group)
- Outcome: a wide range of outcomes (with a focus on health)
"Assessing the Economic Impact of Temporary Basic Income (TBI) in Malaysia", with MIER and UNDP (work in progress)
- Exposure: receiving TBI (a program targeting the poor)
- Outcome: a wide range of outcomes (with a focus on health)
2. Economic Development
"Heterogeneous Impacts of Trade Liberalization on Export Entry and Training: A Multi-Destination Perspective", with Chujian Shao and Qiliang Chen (Under Review)
- To be presented in the 2024 WEAI Annual Meeting
- Manuscript available upon request
- Exposure: changes in tariffs
- Outcome: firms' export entry and human capital investment decisions
"Impacts of Built Environment on Urban Vitality in Cultural Districts: A Case Study of Haikou and Suzhou", with Jiayi Liu, Yanbin Li, Yanhan Xu, Yang Hu, and Yue Yu (Under Review)
- Manuscript available upon request
- Exposure: built environment measures covering the transport system, function features, and spatial quality dimensions
- Outcome: urban vitality measures based on nighttime light and average population density
"Is Younger Better? The Impacts of Early Promotion on Chinese Politicians and Regional Economic Development", with Yunxuan Zhu and Keyan Liu
- Exposure: promotion timing
- Outcome: regional excess GDP growth, carbon emissions, and innovation activities
秦雪征,庄晨*,杨汝岱:“计划生育对子女教育水平的影响——来自中国的微观证据”,《经济学(季刊)》,2018年第3期,第897-922页。
- Exposure: being a single child due to the One-Child Policy
- Outcome: human capital investment by households, i.e., educational attainment
Xuezheng Qin, Castiel Chen Zhuang*, and Rudai Yang. "Does One-Child Policy Improve Children's Human Capital in Urban China? A Regression Discontinuity Design." Journal of Comparative Economics, 45(2): 287-303, May 2017.
- Exposure: being a single child due to the One-Child Policy
- Outcome: human capital investment by households, i.e., educational attainment
Xuezheng Qin*, Tianyu Wang, and Castiel Chen Zhuang. "Intergenerational Transfer of Human Capital and Its Impact on Income Mobility: Evidence from China." China Economic Review, 38: 306-321, April 2016.
- Exposure: intergenerational transfer of human capital
- Outcome: income mobility
"Evaluating the Effects of Rural Revitalization Policies in China", with Zhengwen Liu (work in progress)
- Exposure: living in the key poor counties with more national supports for rural revitalization
- Outcome: a wide range of outcomes
3. Empirical Industrial Organization
"Can Rising Urban House Prices Actually Limit the Outward FDI by Firms in a Home Country? A Story from China", with Feng Yu, Ning Li, and Jingwei Chen (R&R at Journal of International Money and Finance)
- Exposure: house prices
- Outcome: outward FDI, domestic investment, and resource misallocation in the manufacturing industry
"Examining the Zero-Markup Drug Policy in China: A Structural Approach", with Qifan Huang and Zhentong Lu (Under Review)
- Previously circulated as "Vertical Separation and Price Negotiation: A Case Study of China's Lipid-Lowering Drug Industry"
- Presented in the 2022 SUFE-JinanIO Conference (previously known as China-VIOS), 2022 AEA/ASSA Annual Meeting, 2021 China Meeting of Econometric Society, WEAI's 2021 Virtual International Conference (presented by coauthor; check out the session information here), and WEAI's 96th Annual Conference (check out the session information here)
- Slides (Jun 16, 2022)
- Exposure: the Zero-Markup Drug Policy
- Outcome: price; firm revenue; firm profit; consumer utility in the lipid-lowering drug market
"Nonlinear Impacts of Climate Anomalies on Oil Palm Productivity", with Nur Nadia Kamil, Saizi Xiao, Sharifah Nabilah Syed Salleh, and Hongbing Xu (Under Review)
- Exposure: climate risks posed by ENSO
- Outcome: productivity of the oil palm industry
"Health Insurance Design with Heterogeneous Preferences", with Julie Shi and Xi Wang (working paper)
- Previously circulated as "Understanding Deductible and Reimbursement Maximum: A Study of Rural China's Tiered Medical System", "Understanding Deductible and Reimbursement Maximum in a Tiered Medical System" and "Health Insurance Design in a Tiered Medical System"
- Presented in the 2022 ARIA Annual Meeting, 2023 WEAI Annual Meeting
- Exposure: different designs of the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme
- Outcome: hospital choice and spending in the healthcare market
Qifan Huang, Saizi Xiao, and Castiel Chen Zhuang*. "The Heterogeneous Impact of COVID-19 in a Two-Sided Market: Evidence from a Live-Streaming Platform." Applied Economics, 54(49): 5670-5689, October 2022.
- Presented in the NABE TEC 2020 Virtual Poster Sessions
- Exposure: COVID-19 severity from the fans' and celebrities' sides
- Outcome: fans' virtual gifting behaviors, celebrities' live-commerce decisions and sales on a live-streaming platform
Qifan Huang, and Castiel Chen Zhuang*. "Training, Productivity, and Wages: An Investigation of China's Manufacturing Enterprises in a Privatization Era." Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, 30(2): 269-288, Apr 2022.
- Exposure: human capital investment by employers, i.e., employee (on-the-job) training
- Outcome: productivity and wages in the manufacturing industry
"Live-Commerce Product Assortment and Competition: Evidence from Live-Streaming Platform Celebrities", with Ying-chin Chen, Qifan Huang, and Yushi Wang
- Previously circulated as "The Causal Impact of Market Competition on Product Variety: A Deep Neural Network Representation Learning Approach"
- Presented in the 2021 INFORMS Annual Meeting (presented by coauthor; check out the session abstract here)
- Exposure: competition shocks on a live-streaming platform
- Outcome: product variety on a live-streaming platform
"Do Joint Ventures Innovate More? Micro-evidence from China", with Jingwei Chen, Guanhua Hu, and Feng Yu (half-baked working paper)
- Exposure: inward FDI
- Outcome: firms' innovation activities
"Heterogeneous Policy Impacts: A Modal Regression Approach", with Ying-chin Chen (half-baked working paper)
- Manuscript available upon request
- Exposure: any policy changes (e.g., implementing the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme)
- Outcome: any economic decisions (e.g., participants' out-of-pocket spending)
"Environmental Policy and Innovation: A Systematic Evaluation in China", with Xianling Long and Zhiqiang Wang (work in progress)
- Exposure: the stringency and uncertainty levels of China's environmental policies
- Outcome: firms' innovation activities