Ongoing Research Projects

Historical Roots of Culture and Economic Behavior

Grant Period : Oct 2025 - Mar 2027

Faculty : Pei GAO

This seed funding is critical for advancing my research agenda on how history shapes enduring cultural traits and economic behaviors. While the impact of historical shocks on macroeconomic development is well documented, the mechanisms through which long-term, community-level experiences shape individual preferences remain understudied. To address this gap, we propose two innovative and complementary studies.

The first study investigates how historical variation in environmental conditions shapes contemporary risk preferences, drawing on unique brokerage trading records and court data to capture risk-related behaviors. The second study investigates how persistent disadvantages faced by a specific social group—such as exclusion from fertile land and restricted educational access—have influenced human-capital investments and occupational choices, leveraging a newly constructed village-level dataset. Together, these projects offer valuable evidence on the broad question of how cultural traits are historically formed, persist over time, and continue to shape economic behavior today. They make a significant contribution to the literature on culture and long-run development, positioning the work as highly competitive for major international grants.

Public Finance in Developing Countries

Grant Period : Sep 2025 - Aug 2030

Faculty : Daniel OVERBECK

In the wake of trade networks and international aid structures crumbling, the independent mobilization of states’ domestic resources for the funding public goods is as important as ever. Especially in developing countries investments in infrastructure, welfare programs and public education are often insufficient, hindering sustainable growth.

The questions that are tackled include: How can countries with low-state capacity increase tax revenues? How can they do so in the prevalence of informal institutions dominating everyday life? What do different tax systems imply for social equity? Advances in these timely topics present major opportunities for countries as they could ease up tight public budgets. They also contribute to building a better societal contract between the state and citizens.

Export Controls and Scale Economies: Evidence from 2019 Korea-Japan Trade Dispute

Grant Period : Sep 2025 - Aug 2030

Faculty : KIM Younghoon

Can export controls backfire, leading to an increase (decrease) in productivity in the targeted (imposed) country? And how might this effect vary across industries? I use the responses of Korean and Japanese producers to the 2019 Korea-Japan Trade Dispute to answer these questions.

In 2019, Japan announced export controls against South Korea for national strategic items, leaving enforcement up to Japanese officials. Although no export restrictions were imposed in practice, the potential risk alone triggered substantial changes in the imports, exports and production of both Korea and Japan. Korea’s imports from Japan declined significantly, irrespective of whether items were subject to the announcement. However, Korea’s imports from Japan decreased disproportionately in sectors where Japan had been the primary supplier, and Korean producers’ revenue also increased in these sectors, suggesting import substitution. Notably, Korea’s exports to the rest of the world expanded more in these sectors while prices declined, suggesting increased productivity.

Motivated by these empirical findings, I structurally estimate the strength of scale economies in each industry, leveraging the variation in exposure to Korea’s substitution away from Japanese goods, both across and within industries. This project provides novel evidence that export controls can benefit the targeted country, driven by scale economies. It also demonstrates the heterogeneous strength of scale economies across sectors, offering direct implications for industrial policy.

Designing An Optimal Carbon Policy for Global Supply Chains

Grant Period : Jul 2025 - Jun 2030

Faculty : Philipp LUDWIG

The emergence of global production and transportation networks has spurred economic growth across countries at the expense of a dramatic increase carbon emissions. To curtail the environmental cost of globalization while maintaining the welfare benefits of global trade, we need new policy approaches that can tackle the problem without disturbing the complex structure of global supply chains.

My research addresses this question empirically and quantitatively by studying how different agents along the supply chain respond to environmental policy interventions. At the center of this agenda is the global shipping industry whose activities are a key driver of global greenhouse gas emissions. To decarbonize the sector without disrupting international transport services, we need to model the behavioral response of shipping companies to environmental policy. To make progress on this front, I will build on recent advances in the economic literature and develop a quantitative spatial framework which can serve as a laboratory to study the welfare effects of policy interventions. Results will inform us how to design an effective carbon policy for global supply chains and how to evenly distribute the economic cost of climate change across countries.

Jordan's BRT System

Grant Period : Mar 2025 - Sep 2026

Faculty : Lea Bou SLEIMAN

This research aims to evaluate the socio-economic impact of the Amman Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system on labor participation in Jordan, with a particular focus on gender and refugee populations. Originally planned in 2009, the implementation of the BRT was delayed until 2021. During this period, significant changes occurred in Amman’s demographic and urban landscape, including a doubling population between 2007 and 2015, driven by a large influx of refugees.

The BRT was designed to connect high-density areas, but these areas have shifted over the years, raising questions about who benefits from the system today. A 2018 study surveyed 497 women and found that 47% turned down job offers due to poor public transportation options. However, this survey was small in scale and conducted before the BRT was operational. Our project seeks to build on these findings by developing a larger, more comprehensive survey to assess how the BRT has impacted labor participation, especially for women and refugees. Additionally, the survey will allow us to understand the actual barriers to labor participation and access to education, providing a more comprehensive view of women’s beliefs and perceptions of public transport, including issues such as safety and social norms.

The results will provide valuable insights for policymakers on how to design public transportation systems that promote gender equality, support marginalized communities, and contribute to economic growth.

Digital Economy Development in ASEAN: Patterns, Key Industry Contributors, Global Linkages, and Policy Recommendations

Grant Period : Feb 2025 - Jan 2027

Faculty : VU Minh Khuong

The study employs Input-Output Table Analysis to examine sector size and interdependencies, and Regression Techniques to analyze factors affecting digital economy growth, including GDP, employment, productivity, and trade. OECD provides comprehensive data on Input-Output Tables, Inter-Country I-O Tables, and Trade-in-Manpower, facilitating rigorous analysis and the development of critical new insights.

Urban and Environmental Economics

Grant Period : Aug 2024 - Jul 2029

Faculty : Lea Bou SLEIMAN

My research agenda for the coming years includes the following areas:
1. Investigating the impacts of environmental policies in urban areas from urban, environmental, and political perspectives. This includes several papers focused on Paris as well as studies on other cities.
2. Addressing transportation issues in developing countries.
3. Examining bus procurement challenges and the electrification of bus fleets.

Applying Market Design to Political Economy: Institutional Design & Stability

Grant Period : Feb 2022 - Feb 2027

Faculty : Ashutosh Dinesh THAKUR

In many organizations, members need to be assigned to certain positions, whether these are civil servants to states, legislators to committees, or executives to roles. Who gets what position crucially affects the performance of the organization, the efficacy of its operations, the synergies/conflicts generated, and the resulting satisfaction/aspiration of its members. I use tools from market design and matching theory to i) empirically evaluate, ii) theoretically understand, and iii) practically improve the design of these assignment procedures.

I explore new applications of matching theory in public administration, e.g., allocating Indian civil servants to states and assigning US Senators to legislative committees. My empirical analysis leverages the institutional knowledge of the underlying matching mechanisms along with new preference data of US Senators and Indian Civil servants to evaluate the efficacy of the procedures and their impact on outcomes (e.g., American legislative policymaking and party discipline, and India’s state capacity and development outcomes).

Theoretically, my projects shed light on institutional stability and organizational culture: why organizations endogenously change their assignment procedures over time, which coalitions lobby for change, and when are they successful. Lastly, my work delivers practical design improvements for Indian civil service allocation procedures and other two-sided market platforms.

Using Nudges to Induce Behavioral Change

Grant Period : Sep 2021 - Aug 2026

Faculty : Lawrence JIN

I investigate the role of behavioral biases in decision-making, and explore behavioral interventions (“nudges”) that can help improve public welfare. Specifically, I study decision-making in two settings: medicine and transportation.

The first setting is medical decision-making. For example, I study the behavior of diabetes patients in Singapore. Diabetes is a major public health problem in Singapore, costing over $1 billion annually to manage as a nation. The first step is to use data from SingHealth’s diabetes patient registry to empirically investigate behavioral & medical anomalies, and generate insights on the types of behavioral interventions that could help patients with glycemic control. Using the insights, I will design a comprehensive behavioral intervention program for the patients and test its effectiveness in the field.

The second setting is taxi drivers’ decision-making. In an earlier work, I found that taxi drivers tend to drive unnecessarily at the airport, which lowers their earnings and generates unnecessary air pollution.I will use the data from Singapore’s LTA to investigate other locations at which drivers often make similar mistakes, as well as other potential behavioral biases. Then, we will design and conduct a field experiment to “nudge” drivers to reduce their mistakes, which would in turn increase their income and reduce unnecessary air pollution in Singapore.

Early Childhood Human Capital Formation: Policy Challenges and Solutions

Grant Period : Nov 2020 - Jan 2026

Faculty : Saravana RAVINDRAN

The question of how to build human capital with limited resources remains a key policy problem worldwide. This project seeks to understand new challenges to the supply and demand of early childhood development services in Asia during the post-COVID-19 period. The proposed study will take place in multiple countries, drawing from unique policies implemented across Asia. First, through surveys with workers of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program in India, the largest early childhood development program in the world, I seek to understand challenges related to the delivery of maternal and child health services. This project also seeks to understand the effectiveness of potential policy solutions to address these challenges, including performance feedback and monitoring of ICDS workers. Second, I seek to understand the medium-term impacts of a unique early childhood intervention shown to have positive short-run impacts in Bangladesh. This program was implemented using the existing government infrastructure and National Nutritional Services. I propose to conduct surveys of health workers, parents, and children to understand the medium-term impacts of the intervention and the extent to which recipients of the program were able to cushion the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ongoing Research Projects

Economic Development and Competitiveness