Zichen Deng

I study health and development economics. My research is inspired by the belief that expenditures in health, food and clean air represent an investment in the most valuable resource we have, the people itself. Specifically, my current work has focused on looking into the implementation, the effectiveness and the mechanism of policies which can provide those basic needs. I am also interested in addressing econometric issues motivated by empirical work.
I am on the job market in 2019-20 and will be available for interviews at 2019 European Job Market and ASSA 2020 meeting.

Job market paper

Clearing the Smog: Monitors, Accountability and Pollution Reduction in China with Sebastian Axbard Despite an almost forty-fold increase in the number of environmental regulations during the past 50 years, environmental degradation is widespread across the globe. In this paper, we study whether better monitoring of the environment can improve the effectiveness of policy by holding government officials accountable. We focus on air pollution in China and investigate the impact of a nationwide monitoring program in which the number of monitors is determined by strict assignment criteria. Our main results show that an additional air-quality monitor reduced pollution by 2-3% as measured by satellite data and increased enforcement of environmental regulations by 20%. An investigation of the mechanism suggests that the impact of information on enforcement and policy outcomes depend crucially on both the incentives faced by the local officials and a sufficient insulation of the data from government influence.

Working papers

A Bit of Salt, A Trace of Life: gender norms and the impact of a salt iodization program on human capital formation with Maarten Lindeboom; under review Winner of the 1st prize for best paper at the Essen Health Conference 2018.
Data Combination using Heterogeneous Samples: with application to long-term effects of early-life undernutrition
Available upon request

(Pre-PhD) Publications

2019

Job Search, Liquidity Shock and Post-match Quality of Rural to Urban Migrants in China with Yuanyuan Chen forthcoming in Journal of Labor Research