Development | Center for Economic Policy

Research Affiliate Jin Wang Associate Professor, Division of Social Science Jin Wang is an associate professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She was educated at the Tsinghua University of China for her BA and MA in Economics before getting her PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research, which mostly has a policy focus, is mainly in the areas of Development Economics, Public Economics and Chinese Economy.

Publications Knowing Is Not Half the Battle: Impacts of Information from the National Health Screening Program in Korea By Hyuncheol Bryant Kim (on leave), Suejin A. Lee, Wilfredo Lim

Publications Statistical Evidence on the Impact of Agricultural Straw Burning on Urban Air Quality in China By Alexis Kai Hon Lau, Guojun He, Tong Liu

Working Paper Series Evaluating the Distributive Effects of a Development Intervention Most analyses of randomized controlled trials of development interventions estimate an average treatment effect. However, the aggregate impact on welfare also depends on distributional effects. We propose a simple approach to evaluate efficiency-equity trade-offs, that follow the utilitarian tradition of Atkinson (1970). The method does not impose additional assumptions or data requirements beyond those needed to estimate the average treatment effect. We illustrate the approach using data from a credit delivery experiment we implemented in West Bengal, India. By Pushkar Maitra, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee

Working Paper Series Decentralized Targeting of Agricultural Credit Programs: Private versus Political Intermediaries We conduct a field experiment in India comparing two approaches to appointing a local commission agent to select eligible smallholder farmers for a subsidized credit program: a private trader in TRAIL, versus a political appointee in GRAIL. Although both schemes had similar loan take-up and repayments and similar treatment impacts on borrowing and farm output, only TRAIL raised farm profits significantly. This cannot be explained by greater connectedness between TRAIL agents and farmers, or differential patterns of borrower selection. By Pushkar Maitra, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee

Working Paper Series Economic Policies vs. Identity Politics: The Rise of a Right-wing Nationalist Party in India As in many other parts of the world, India has witnessed a surge in the popularity of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a right wing nationalist party. This paper examines the respective roles of economic policy and “identity politics” for the sharp rise in support for BJP in a region where it had a negligible vote share until 2014. Using household level panel data from 3500 rural households in West Bengal, we examine the effect of different welfare benefits delivered by state and national governments, on support for the regional incumbent (Trinamool Congress (TMC)) and the BJP after 2014. By Pushkar Maitra, Dilip Mookherjee, Sandip Mitra

Seminar, Lecture, Talk Converging to Convergence (Co-sponsored by IEMS and Center for Economic Policy)

Converging to Convergence

Workshop HCEO-CEP-CREC Virtual Summer School on Socioeconomic Inequality 2021 The Center for Economic Policy hosted the Virtual Summer School on Socioeconomic Inequality 2021 for PhD students in economics and other social sciences from August 9 to August 13. The program was co-organized with the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group (HCEO) of the University of Chicago and the China-Russia Eurasian Studies Center (CREC)-a joint center established by HKUST Society Hub, HKUST Business School, New Economic School, and Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO.

2021-08-09 ~ 2021-08-13
8:30am - 12:50pm

Socioeconomic Inequality

Working Paper Series Performance Evaluation, Influence Activities, and Bureaucratic Work Behavior: Evidence from China Subjective performance evaluation is widely used by firms and governments to provide work incentives. However, delegating evaluation power to local senior leadership could induce influence activities: agents might devote much effort to pleasing their supervisors, rather than focusing on productive tasks that benefit their organizations. We conduct a large-scale randomized field experiment among Chinese local government employees and provide the first rigorous empirical evidence on the existence and implications of influence activities. By Alain de Janvry, Elisabeth Sadoulet, Shaoda Wang, Qiong Zhang, Guojun He

Research Affiliate Yao Amber Li Associate Professor, Department of Economics
Associate Director, Center for Economic Development Professor Yao Amber Li is currently an Associate Professor of Economics in School of Business and Management, the Associate Director of Center for Economic Development and the Dean of Business & Management at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). She has been serving as Vice-chairperson of the Standing Committee of CTRG (China Trade Research Group) since 2019 and Joint Secretary-General of the Secretariat of the Quality Alliance at Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau University Alliance since 2020.