My research is composed of two parts. First, using both contemporary data and historical data, I seek to understand the education decisions and labor supply of women and how policy changes and social norms shape these decisions. Second, I analyze the historical roots of modernization in developing countries, for example, infrastructure construction under colonial rule.
Coeducation, Female Human Capital, and the Evolution of Gender Norms (with Bin Huang) New draft coming out soon!
Abstract: This paper investigates how the inclusion of women in higher education affects men's gender attitudes and generates spillover effects through male students, improving the human capital accumulation of a broader female population. We examine a coeducation reform at Peking University in 1920, which admitted female students into universities for the first time in China. To measure spillovers, we focus on the indirect effect through male students and compare female educational outcomes in the home counties of first-exposed and last-non-exposed male graduates. Our quasi-experimental analyses show that there is 11.4 percentage points higher probability of having female university students in the exposed counties compared with non-exposed counties. The main mechanism is the spread of more progressive gender norms through the personal networks of male students, reflected by the positive shift in male students' gender attitudes and the increase in university enrollment predominantly among female students from the same clan. Our findings highlight the importance of exposure to gender diversity in altering gender attitudes and demonstrate how personal networks amplify the diffusion of these changes. However, the spillover did not benefit the mass schooling of girls, as female enrollment in primary schools was unaffected, which suggests potential disparities among women.
Presented at: Zurich Development Seminar '22*, Warwirk CAGE-AMES Workshop '23, LSE Chinese Economic and Social History Workshop '23, Economic History Society Annual Conference '23, Northwestern Economic History Lunch '23*, Warwick CAGE Summer School '23, LSE Graduate Economic History Seminar '23, Meeting of the Society of Economics of the Household '24, NUS Applied Economics Student Workshop '24, International Symposium on Quantitative History '24, ACES Political Economy Summer School '24, EHS PhD Thesis Workshop '24, ASREC Europe Conference '24, Tübingen Econ Hist Winter School '24*, NEUDC '24, Oxford-Warwick-LSE Workshop in Economic History '24, Nick Crafts Memorial conference '24, Cambridge Economic and Social History Workshop '24, EHS Residential Training Course '24, Asian Historical Economics Conference '24.
* co-author presentations
Female Human Capital Investment with Limited Returns (with Negar Ziaeian)
The Canals Not Built (with James Fenske and Bishnupriya Gupta)
Manufacturing Reallocation and Gender Gap in the Labor Market