In the fourth quarter of 2025, faculty and students of the School of Economics, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE) achieved fruitful research outputs. More than 30 papers were published in well-known domestic and international economics journals, including 14 articles in international Tier‑1 and Tier‑2 economics journals, and 5 papers in top domestic journals. A summary of selected works and abstracts is presented below.
Department of Microeconomics | Tenured Professor Tang Qianfeng (co-authored)
On the Core of Markets with Co-ownerships and Indivisibilities
Journal of Economic Theory (Tier 1),
Volume 232, March 2026
Following Balbuzanov and Kotowski (2019), this paper studies the exchange of indivisible objects among agents with unit demand, where initially each object is either privately owned or co-owned by multiple agents. The authors propose a new core concept, the effective core, to remedy limitations of conventional core definitions. A coalition is said to effectively block an assignment if it weakly blocks the assignment (as under the strong core) and the block is credible: no coalition member claims a redundant object belonging to a self-feasible subcoalition. The effective core is shown to be a nonempty subset of the weak core and a superset of the strong core; all its assignments are Pareto efficient. The paper also develops a strategy-proof algorithm to locate assignments within the effective core and compares this notion in detail with Balbuzanov and Kotowski’s exclusion core.
Department of Resource and Environmental Economics | Tenured Professor Lin Liguo & Associate Professor Sun Wei (co-authored)
Two birds, one stone: Responses of agriculture to water pollution regulation
Journal of Development Economics (Tier 1),
Volume 179, February 2026
This paper treats China’s Water Quality Control Assessment Plan as a natural experiment to examine environmental regulation’s effects on fertilizer use and food security. Using county-level variation in enforcement incentives generated by proximity to water-quality monitoring stations, the authors document a 5.9% reduction in fertilizer application among upstream counties, driven by cuts in public agricultural financial support. Information that frames agriculture as a major pollution source strengthens regulators’ incentives to curb fertilizer use. Agricultural output remains stable, consistent with pre-existing over-application of fertilizer and modest productivity gains likely arising from improved water quality.
Department of Labor Economics | Assistant Researcher Zhang Huili (co-authored)
Narrowing or Widening the Gender Gap in Market and Domestic Work? The Impact of Workweek Reduction Reform in China
Journal of Development Economics (Tier 1),
Volume 179, February 2026
This paper studies whether shorter working hours reduce gender gaps in market and domestic labour supply by evaluating China’s workweek reduction reform. It finds that the policy deepened gendered labour specialization within dual-earner households, pushing women further toward domestic roles. Women increased time spent on childcare and housework, while men withdrew from domestic chores, worked extra hours beyond the scheduled week, and invested in further education. This pattern improved men’s earnings and career progression without comparable gains for women. Polarization was strongest in households with high demand for home-produced services or a larger pre-reform male-female wage gap. The results show that household optimization under shorter working hours can amplify labour-market gender inequality.
Department of Economic History | Assistant Professor Duan Li (co-authored)
Awakening latent human capital: Economic opening up and entrepreneurship in 19th century China
Journal of Development Economics (Tier 1),
Volume 179, February 2026
This paper investigates elite recruitment and incentive problems during China’s early industrialization. It analyses how upper-tail human capital shaped entrepreneurship between 1840 and 1904, and how the Imperial Examination system allocated talent between traditional sectors and modern firms. Using the treaty-port system as an exogenous shock to industrialization, the study identifies heterogeneous responses across different tiers of elite human capital. Traditional human capital exerted mixed effects on modern entrepreneurship: some scholars seized new commercial opportunities while others remained oriented toward official careers. The findings illuminate the complex interplay between the civil service examination regime and economic modernization, and how bureaucratic institutions shape talent reallocation and industrial growth.
Department of Econometrics | Assistant Professor Wu Ruike (co-authored)
Making distributionally robust portfolios feasible in high dimension
Journal of Econometrics (Tier 1),
Volume 252, November 2025
Robust portfolio estimation for large asset pools grows more important because empirical inference suffers from large-sample biases in big-data settings. The authors develop a distributionally robust framework for high-dimensional mean–variance portfolio selection under distributional ambiguity. Using factor structures, they extend the distributionally robust mean–variance problem of Blanchet et al. (2022) to high dimensions and reformulate it as a penalized risk-minimization problem. A data-adaptive procedure is proposed to estimate both the ambiguity set size and the minimum acceptable target return, with asymptotic consistency established. Monte Carlo simulations show that the estimated ambiguity and return targets closely approximate oracle values, and the resulting robust portfolio delivers high out-of-sample Sharpe ratios. Empirical tests on S&P 500 and Russell 2000 constituents confirm superior risk-return performance relative to competing strategies.
Department of Microeconomics | Tenured Professor Yao Lan (co-authored)
Expectations-based reference-dependence and labor supply: Eliciting cabdrivers’ expectations in the field
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (Tier 2),
Volume 239, November 2025
This paper reports a field experiment on the labour supply of Shanghai taxi drivers, estimated using an expectations-based reference-dependent model that allows both daily income and hours targets. Its core innovation is to directly elicit drivers’ income and working-hour expectations twice per day. Expectations shape labour supply as predicted by reference-dependent theory, and hours expectations exert a stronger effect than income expectations. Both expectations correlate with recent historical averages; income expectations adjust within the day, while hours expectations are sticky. The evidence suggests that targeting behaviour anchored on hours expectations matters more than previously recognized.
Department of Microeconomics | Associate Professor Zhu Shuguang (co-authored)
First Best Implementation with Costly Information Acquisition
Journal of Economics & Management Strategy (Tier 2),
Volume 34, November 2025
This paper studies mechanism design when agents can acquire information flexibly but at a cost. There is one principal and four or more agents sharing a common prior over payoff-relevant states. The principal proposes a mechanism, and each agent may design a private signal to learn about the state. As long as agents can acquire a state-independent signal at zero cost, a mechanism exists that implements any social choice rule with zero equilibrium information-acquisition costs for all agents.
Department of Labor Economics | Professor Chen Yuanyuan & PhD candidate Wang Jiaxin (co-authored)
Tiger Moms: Mother's education and investments in children's human capital in China
Journal of Population Economics (Tier 2),
Volume 38, November 2025
This paper examines how China’s 1999 college enrolment expansion reshaped parental human-capital investments in children. It uses staggered provincial rollout of enrolment quotas to construct exogenous exposure measures and finds that the reform raised educational attainment for both mothers and fathers. Greater expansion exposure for mothers substantially increased educational investment in children, while paternal exposure had no comparable effect. Mechanisms point to rising maternal income and relative educational status, which empowered mothers and explains the gender difference. The study identifies a new intergenerational channel through which higher-education expansion operates.
Department of Microeconomics | Associate Professor Zhu Shuguang (co-authored)
Bayesian persuasion followed by receiver’s mechanism design
Social Choice and Welfare (Tier 2),
Online, October 2025
In standard Bayesian persuasion, the receiver acts after observing the sender’s public signal. In many settings, however, the receiver may screen the sender further via a contract. This paper analyses this extension in a binary quasi-linear environment. In the first model, where the sender holds full private information, the public signal becomes less informative than in standard Bayesian persuasion; public and private signals act as substitutes. Yet both players are better off: the sender voluntarily accepts additional screening. In the second model, where the sender jointly designs public and private signals, the sender sometimes chooses less precise private information. Welfare and information efficiency rank highest under the first model, lower under the second, and lowest under conventional Bayesian persuasion. This implies standard Bayesian persuasion models may bias predictions toward excessive inefficiency.
Department of Labor Economics | Assistant Researcher Zhang Huili (co-authored)
Education, desired fertility, and HIV/AIDS: Evidence from China’s compulsory schooling law
Journal of Comparative Economics (Tier 2),
Online, October 2025
This paper estimates the effect of education on HIV/AIDS infection using China’s Compulsory Schooling Law as a quasi-experiment. Expanded schooling improves HIV/AIDS knowledge; one extra year of compulsory schooling exposure reduces HIV infection by 6.51% and mortality by 2.15%, mainly through less blood-borne transmission. Effects on sexual transmission are ambiguous. The law reduces women’s desired fertility but not men’s. Women become more active contraceptive users within households and substitute female-controlled contraception for condoms. This behavioural shift may raise sexually transmitted infection risks and offset the protective effect on sexual HIV transmission.
Department of Microeconomics | Professor Yang Zhe (single-authored)
Equilibria in Strategy-Form Games with Both Noncooperative and Cooperative Frameworks
Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications (Mathematics Tier 2),
Volume 207, October 2025
This paper analyses strategy-form games in which agents play noncooperatively and cooperatively at the same time. An equilibrium concept is defined, and an existence theorem is proved for finite-agent games with finite-dimensional strategy spaces using results from Bonnisseau and Iehl (2007). The framework is generalized to infinite-dimensional strategy spaces. A weak equilibrium concept is further introduced for games with infinitely many agents under joint noncooperative and cooperative structures, together with a corresponding existence theorem.
Department of Econometrics | Lecturer Fan Xinyue (co-authored)
Central Bank Communication, Information Spillovers and Macroeconomic Performance: A Narrative Shock Perspective
Economic Research Journal (Class A Top Chinese Journal),
Issue 8, 2025
Precise implementation and transmission of monetary policy are essential for high-quality development and sophisticated macroeconomic management, and constitute a frontier research topic. This paper integrates information-driven theory into monetary-policy analysis. It uses high-dimensional sparse modelling to identify narrative shocks from central bank statements and news texts, then applies Granger causality, high-dimensional TVP-VARs and smooth-transition local projections to trace information diffusion from the central bank to media, economic agents and the real economy. Narrative shocks from central bank communication align closely with monetary-policy stances, and key policy messages are effectively transmitted to news media during reform and intervention episodes. News media are critical intermediaries: when the spillover channel from the central bank to media functions smoothly, interest-rate and quantity-based guidance stabilizes expectations and the real economy. When this channel is blocked, both instruments lose effectiveness. The work offers new methods for identifying narrative shocks and informs the modernization of macroeconomic governance.
Department of Econometrics | Tenured Professor Zhou Yahong, Associate Professor Jin Zequn & PhD candidate Xiao Xinyue (co-authored)
Estimation and Application of Partially Linear Quantile Selection Models
Journal of Management Science in China (Class A Top Chinese Journal),
Issue 9, 2025
This paper studies identification and estimation of partially linear quantile models with sample selection bias. To correct selection bias in quantile regression, the authors model the joint distribution of unobservable disturbances in the outcome and selection equations using copulas. Identification assumptions are stated, and estimation procedures for quantile coefficients and copula parameters are derived via generalized method of moments for quantiles. Consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator are established. Nonparametric bootstrap standard errors and specification tests for nonlinearity are proposed. A link to endogenous linear quantile selection models via control-function methods is developed. Monte Carlo simulations show good finite-sample performance. The model is applied to estimate the returns to female education to illustrate its practical value.
Department of Economic History | Professor Wang Fang & PhD candidate Gao Shan (co-authored)
Factor Endowments, Value Trade-offs and State Capacity: The Basic Logic of Early Explorations of China’s Economic Modernization Thought
Academic Monthly (Class B Top Chinese Journal),
Issue 11, 2025
Economic modernization was the core theme of China’s social and economic transformation in modern times. This paper builds an analytical framework of “factor endowment — value trade-off — state capacity” to reconstruct debates on economic modernization among Chinese intellectuals in the 1930s–1940s. Starting from assessments of China’s factor endowments, scholars advanced agricultural-first strategies, industrialization strategies and heavy-industry catch-up strategies. These proposals reflected trade-offs among multiple goals: improving people’s livelihood, transforming development modes and safeguarding economic security, while weighing the role and required capabilities of state power. This intellectual history represents early theoretical exploration of a Chinese path to modernization and supplies historical inspiration for advancing Chinese modernization today.
The School of Economics, SUFE consistently treats research innovation as the core engine of disciplinary development. Its faculty adhere to world-class disciplinary standards, draw on years of teaching-reform experience, combine China-focused empirical grounding with global academic vision, and push forward frontier research. These sustained efforts strengthen the school’s academic competitiveness and support high-level disciplinary construction.
