Xiang Ma. 258 Huntington St, 3C Department of Economics. New Haven, CT Telephone: (203)

Transcription

1 Xiang Ma Home Address: Office Address: 258 Huntington St, 3C New Haven, CT Telephone: (203) Personal web page: Citizenship: China, F-1 visa Fields of Concentration: Development Economics (Primary Field) Econometrics (Secondary Field) Desired Teaching: Development Economics Econometrics Microeconomics (Undergraduate) Comprehensive Examinations Completed: 2011 (Oral): Development Economics, Econometrics 2010 (Written): Macroeconomics, Microeconomics Dissertation Title: Public Policies in Developing Countries Committee: Professor Christopher Udry (Chair) Professor Eric Weese Professor Nancy Qian Professor Daniel Keniston Expected Completion Date: May 2016 Degrees: Ph.D., Economics,, 2016 (expected) M.Phil., Economics,, 2012 M.A., Economics,, 2011 B.A., Economics, Tsinghua University, 2009

2 Fellowships, Honors and Awards: University Dissertation Fellowship,, The Louis K. and Marie L. Kofsky Scholarship,, The Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship, , Cowles Foundation Fellowship,, Doctoral Fellowship,, Teaching Experience: Econometrics & Data Analysis I (undergraduate, instructor S Kortum), Spring 2015 Development Economics (IDE graduate, instructor M Boozer), Spring 2014 Research and Work Experience: Research Assistant to Christopher Udry,, Summer 2011 Research Assistant to David Atkin,, Fall 2010 Working Papers: Economies of Scale and Heterogeneity in Provision of Public Goods: Evidence from School Consolidation in China (July 2015), Job Market Paper The Effects of Tax Reduction on Agricultural Household Consumption and Investment with Binzhen Wu (September 2014) Seminar and Conference Presentations: NEUDC, Brown University, Nov Referee Service: Journal of Development Economics Languages: Chinese (native), English

3 References: Prof. Christopher Udry Phone: (203) Prof. Eric Weese Phone: (203) Prof. Nancy Qian Phone: (203) Prof. Daniel Keniston New Haven, CT Phone: (203) Dissertation Abstract I study policies designed to improve the efficiency of public education and to increase farmers permanent incomes. I complement program evaluation methods with structural estimation techniques that allow me to recover policymakers preferences. Chapter 1: Economies of Scale and Heterogeneity in Provision of Public Goods: Evidence from School Consolidation in China [Job Market Paper] I examine the trade-offs faced by central decision makers responsible for delivering local public goods. This paper uses a dramatic school consolidation program implemented in rural China in the 2000s to recover the preferences of local authorities who spatially allocate public goods. I pay particular attention to cases when there may be heterogeneous productivity across schools, increasing returns in schooling production, and home-to-school commuting costs. I focus, therefore, on the supply side of public good provision, in contrast to much of the recent literature s focus on the collective action of local communities from the demand side. From 2000 to 2010, China closed more than half of its primary schools. The main reason is that demographic change stemming from the one-child policy led to a sharp decline in enrollment in primary schools in rural areas. China s State Council initiated the school consolidation in 2001 but county governments managed school consolidation within their districts. Therefore the observed pattern of school consolidation reveals county-level governments objectives and

4 incentives. To analyze these changes, I use three datasets: the Gansu survey of Children and Families; the Gansu Administrative School Data; and a telephone survey I conducted. I first use descriptive regressions to establish three stylized facts. First, smaller schools and academically weaker schools were more likely to be closed. Second, post school consolidation, the test scores of students whose schools were closed increased, while the test scores of students in receiving schools showed little change. Third, students whose schools were closed paid additional costs due to a longer commute between home and school after school consolidation. I then build and estimate a structural model of local governments decision-making to rationalize the aforementioned stylized facts. The model has two main components a production function of per capita school quality, and a payoff function for local governments. The production function incorporates economies of scale in production and unobserved heterogeneity in school productivity. The payoff function incorporates authorities valuation of educational attainment, the cost of resources and heterogeneity in home-to-school distance. The econometric challenge associated with production function estimation is endogeneity of inputs, due to unobserved school productivity. To resolve this issue, I exploit the model prediction that the number of quality-adjusted teachers is monotonic in school productivity, conditional on the number of students. Therefore, I can infer the unobserved school productivity for all schools using teacher allocation information in the administrative data. So I draw on Ackerberg-Caves-Frazer (2006), but use teachers as an analogue of materials. The econometric challenge of estimating the payoff function is the unusual number of choices facing local governments as they consolidated schools. I adopt a moment-inequalities approach and estimate a lower and an upper bound of unit distance cost. I find that the school consolidation process could be rationalized by economies of scale, and trade-offs between commuting costs and school productivity. Estimation of the production function shows that schools that were closed had lower mean productivity. Some very small schools with relatively high productivity were also closed. Estimation of the payoff functions shows that the upper bound of distance cost per 5km per student is only $31 to $47 per year, which is too small to cover their opportunity cost and thus indicates that distance cost was underweighted in local governments decision. Chapter 2: The Effects of Tax Reduction on Agricultural Households Consumption and Investment, with Binzhen Wu From 2000 to 2006, China gradually reduced and finally eliminated its agricultural output tax in rural areas. This tax only depended on the amount of land, and the amount of land was allocated according to the number of family members by rural collectives. Agricultural staple prices were set by the national government during this period. Therefore, this tax exemption directly increased households permanent incomes. Exploiting this policy change, we use panel data and a difference-in-difference identification strategy to investigate how the increase in after-tax disposable income affected rural households consumption and investment decisions. The results

5 show that the effect of tax reduction on consumption was inversely U-shaped. Moreover, the tax reduction had a positive effect on local non-agricultural production and migration and had no significant negative effect on grain output. These facts can be explained by a model of rural households with liquidity constraints. If non-agricultural activities had higher returns than agricultural activities but required some start-up investment, the tax-reduction relaxed the liquidity constraints. Households could start non-agricultural businesses, even sacrificing consumption in the short run. In conclusion, the short run and the long run impacts of the agricultural tax exemption depended on heterogeneity in liquidity constraints facing farmers.