Email
y.hu28@lse.ac.uk

Office Address
Department of Economics
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE

Placement Officer
Matthias Doepke

Supervisors
Tim Besley
Robin Burgess

References
Tim Besley
Department of Economics
London School of Economics and Political Sciences
Houghton St, London WC2A 2AE
t.besley@lse.ac.uk

Robin Burgess
Department of Economics
London School of Economics and Political Sciences
Houghton St, London WC2A 2AE
r.burgess@lse.ac.uk

Mike Callen
Department of Economics
London School of Economics and Political Sciences
Houghton St, London WC2A 2AE
m.j.callen@lse.ac.uk

Download Yuxiao's c.v.

Government and Nature: Evidence on the Distribution of Environmental Damages in China, with Yifan Wang.

Government investments in flood management, such as building dams, often lead to uneven distributional impacts and reallocation of environmental damages. As global flood risk continues to rise, it is increasingly important to understand the trade-off between economic efficiency and environmental justice in such government decisions. In 2000, China implemented the Flood Detention Basin (FDB) policy, a large-scale flood damage reallocation policy that has affected over 15 million people. In severe flood events, the government diverts floodwater to FDBs, which are located in selected rural counties, so that downstream urban areas could be protected. We evaluate aggregate and distributional impacts of the FDB policy, using Difference-in-Differences (DID), Spatial Regression Discontinuity (SRD), and general equilibrium model. We find that FDB designation results in a 10% decrease in county-level nighttime light intensity. We then identify a firm-response channel to explain such underdevelopment: FDB designation leads to a decline in county-level firm entry by 15.9%, and a 19.7% reduction in firm-level fixed asset investments.  Meanwhile, cities being protected could feed back to FDB counties and other regions through trade linkages. We incorporate this mechanism into a spatial general equilibrium model, and find that the monetary benefit-to-cost ratio in outputs exceeds one. Overall, FDB policy has enhanced economic resilience against floods, although the cost is primarily taken by initially more economically vulnerable rural counties I Link to paper.

Works in progress

Trapped in Flood? Migration Decisions in Response to Floods in China, with Runhong Ma. 
We study whether Chinese people in areas of higher flood risk are making optimal migration decisions.

Natural Disasters and Spatial Patterns of Innovation, with Haoyu Gao, Runhong Ma, and Peixuan Zhao.
We study the impact of disasters on the vitality of innovation, and how disasters reshape the spatial distribution of patents.

Struggle in the Battle against Emissions: Green Transition in Steel Industry, with Yuanhang Yu.
We try to understand why it is difficult for steel industry in developing countries to achieve its green target.

In the Shadow of Rainbow: Is Sexual Orientation Wage Gap Disappearing in the US?
We show that gay male employees should have earned more than their heterosexual counterparts, but they did not.

Foreign Aid and Fiscal Capacity in Post-Cold War Africa.
We find that aid volatility in Africa exacerbates African countries' reliance on trade tax.