Qianqian Shang

About Me

I am a PhD candidate in Economics at CEMFI in Madrid, Spain. I work under the supervision of Prof. Monica Martinez-Bravo. Before my PhD studies, I obtained a bachelor degree in Biology at Shandong University in Jinan, China, and a master degree in Economics at Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an, China.

My main research interests are development economics and labor economics.

You can find my CV here.

Research

Job Market Paper

• Internal Migration and Education: The Role of Old-age Support [pdf]
  Presentations: the 2022 EEA-ESEM Congress, Northwest A&F University (2022), the 2022 European Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society, Economics of Migration.

  Abstract

  In most developing countries, pension systems are poorly developed and the elderly rely on their children for old-age support. However, with increasing trends in rural-to-urban migration, many elder parents are left alone with limited assistance. This paper investigates whether parents may strategically lower the education investment in children to reduce the probability of their children out-migrating. In particular, I examine whether the Hukou reforms, which greatly relaxed migration restrictions in rural China, had detrimental effects on educational investments. Exploiting the variation in the timing of exposure to Hukou reforms across prefectures and cohorts, I show that the probability of children being enrolled in high school decreases by 0.1 standard deviations if the migration restrictions at high-school entry age are relaxed by one standard deviation. The effect is larger for parents whose ideal living arrangement at old age is to live near their children. Furthermore, the negative effects only exist for parents without pension entitlement. The results suggest that in contexts with weak policies for old-age support, lifting migration restrictions may have detrimental effects on human capital accumulation.

Working Papers

• The Effects of Robots on Labor Markets and Political Attitudes: The Case of China [pdf]
  Presentation: University of Warwick (2022).

  Abstract

  Robots have been increasingly adopted in production processes throughout the world. This paper evaluates the impact of industrial robots on labor markets and political attitudes in China. Based on robot data from Chinese customs, I construct a direct measurement of robot exposure for each prefecture. Exploiting the variation in robot exposure across years and prefectures, I find that robots have no effect on general employment and wages, but there is heterogeneity regarding firm types. However, I find important effects on unrest: one more robot per thousand workers leads to 1.6 times more episodes of labor unrest. This indicates the replacement effects of robots on labor could generate substantial discontent among some sectors, even though may not generate aggregate negative employment effects. I also explore the effects on individual attitudes using the China Family Panel Studies. I construct an individual exposure to robots based on occupational vulnerability. I find that exposure to robots negatively affects people's evaluation of the government's performance and trust in the local government.

• How Does Children's Sex Affect Parental Sex Preference: Preference Adaptation and Learning, with Quanbao Jiang and Yongkun Yin [pdf]
  Presentation: the 2022 PAA Annual Meeting.

  Abstract

  This study examines the effects of children's sex on women's sex preferences and investigates the underlying mechanisms. Women's sex preference is measured by the proportion of sons and daughters they would like to have. Based on data from a national representative sample of Peruvian women in the Demographic and Health Survey, we find that if the first child is a daughter, the ideal proportion of sons will be lower by 6.2 percentage points (pp), and the ideal proportion of daughters will be higher by 5.3 pp. Moreover, if the first two children are daughters, the ideal proportion of sons will be lower by 8.9 pp, and the ideal proportion of daughters will be higher by 6.2 pp. Further analysis shows that the effects of the sex of the first child are stronger for women with only one child than for women with multiple children and that the effects of having a daughter depend on her birth order, suggesting that both preference adaptation and learning play important roles in generating the effects of children's sex on parental sex preference.

Work in Progress

• Gender Differences in Altruism and Occupation Choice: Experimental Evidence
  with Tom Zohar

• Political Career Concern and AI Adoption in China
  with Monica Martinez-Bravo

• Land Reform, Migration and Children’s Education

Pre-PhD Publications

• Gender Role Attitudes and Fertility Revisited: Evidence from the United States
  with Yongkun Yin. Population Review, 2020. [Link]

• FDI Spillovers on Corporate Social Responsibility: The Channel of Labor Mobility
  with Chun Liu and Yi Zhang. Sustainability, 2018. [Link]

• The Impact of within-Household Relative Income on Happiness: Does Gender Identity Matter?
  with Wan-Hsin Liu and Yongkun Yin. Journal of Research in Gender Studies, 2018. [Link]

Teaching Assistant

• Introductory Mathematics, by Mateo Montenegro, CEMFI, Fall 2021
• University Economics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Spring 2017
• University Economics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Fall 2016