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Digital Distractions with Peer Influence: The Impact of Mobile App Usage on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes
Panle Jia Barwick, Siyu Chen, Chao Fu, Teng Li, Jan 08, 2025We present the first comprehensive evidence of how app usage affects academic performance and early career outcomes. App usage is contagious: a one standard deviation (around 3.5 hours per day) increase in roommates’ app usage raises an individual’s own app usage by 5.8%, with substantial heterogeneity across students. A one standard deviation increase in app usage reduces GPAs by 36.2% of a within-cohort-major standard deviation and lowers wages by 2.3%. The effect of roommates’ app usage is over half the size of an individual’s own usage effect. High-frequency GPS data reveal that high app usage crowds out time in study halls and increases late arrivals at and absences from lectures.
What Happens to Rural Labor Supply Following the Birth of a Son or a Daughter?
Shing-Yi Wang, Nov 20, 2019Our research shows that rural Chinese women's labor supply falls for one year following the birth of a daughter before returning to pre-birth levels while the negative impact of a son on women's labor supply is larger and persists for four years. Furthermore, there is a decrease in household cigarette consumption, and an increase in the mother's probability of being in school, her leisure time, and her participation in...
Opening Up in the 21st Century: A Quantitative Accounting of Chinese Export Growth
Loren Brandt, Kevin Lim, Apr 12, 2023China’s rapid export growth has spurred extensive research investigating its effects on other economies. However, the exact causes of the boom as well as the slowdown in Chinese exporting after 2007 are less well understood.
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Consumption: Learning from High Frequency Transaction Data
Haiqiang Chen, Wenlan Qian, Qiang Wen, May 26, 2021Based on daily transaction data in 214 cities and the difference-in-differences method, we document that daily offline consumption fell by 32%, or 18.57 million RMB per city, during the twelve-week period after China’s COVID-19 outbreak in late January 2020. This implies that China’s offline consumption decreased by over 1.22 trillion RMB in the three-month post-outbreak period, or 1.2% of China’s 2019 GDP. Our estimates suggest a significant economic benefit...
Throwing Good Money after Bad: Zombie Lending and the Supply Chain Contagion of Firm Exit
Yun Dai, Xuchao Li, Dinghua Liu, Jiankun Lu, Jan 19, 2022Zombie lending to downstream firms does not reduce the exit likelihood of upstream firms. Worse, it distorts efficiency-based firm exit in upstream industries. The exit distortion effect works through the trade credit chain and is more profound in industries with stricter financial constraints and tighter supply chain connections
