Time：11:45-12:45, May 8th

Venue：Room 505, Tongji Building A

Topic：How Do Households Adjust to Trade Liberalization? Evidence from China’s WTO Accession

Abstract：

We investigate the impacts of trade liberalization on household behaviors and outcomes in urban China, exploiting regional variation in the exposure to tariff cuts resulting from WTO entry. Regions that initially specialized in industries facing larger tariff cuts experienced relative declines in wages. Households responded to this income shock in several ways. First, household members worked more, especially in the non-tradable sector. Second, more young adults co-resided with their parents, and thus household size increased. Third, households saved less. These behaviors significantly buffered the negative wage shock induced by trade liberalization. (JEL: F14, F16, J20, R23)

Speaker’s Bio：

Dr HUANG Wei is the President’s Assistant Professor in the Department of Real Estate and Department of Strategy and Policy at National University of Singapore. Prior to joining NUS, Dr Huang was a Post-doctoral Fellow in Aging and Health Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Dr Huang received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 2016. He received an M.A in economics from National School of Development at Peking University in 2011, and a B.A. in physics from School of Physics at Peking University in 2008.

His research fields are public economics, labor economics, and health economics.  His research work has been published in journals such as Review of Economic and Statistics, Journal of Labor Economics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Nature, Journal of Economic Perspectives, etc. He is an editor for Economics of Transition.