The teacher shortage is a critical issue in many rural areas around the world. This paper presents the findings of two studies that investigated the impact of financial incentives on teacher attraction and retention in rural schools in Western China. Using the theory of compensating wage differentials and a mixed-method approach, we found that…

The massification of higher education has dramatically changed the association between credentials and jobs in advanced countries, while its impacts in transitional economies have received less academic attention. To address this research lacuna, the paper utilizes rich information from China's national surveys of college graduates from 2003 to…

This dissertation presents three separate essays. The first two essays explore the gender wage gap and its dynamics in urban China from 1995 to 2018. The first chapter decomposes the gender wage gap based on the observed wage for workers with a precise measure of the hourly wages. The first chapter examines the observed average gender wage gap in…

This dissertation examines the impact of state educational programs on the economics of education and labor, focusing on the New York State (NYS) STEM Incentive Program and China's tuition-free policy for vocational secondary education (VSE). The first two Chapters analyze the effects of the NYS STEM Incentive Program, an initiative implemented in…

The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition (BOD) is a popular method for studying the contributions of explanatory factors to social inequality. The results have often been given causal interpretations. While recent work and this article both show that some types of BOD are equivalent to a counterfactual-based treatment effect/selection bias decomposition,…

Using the China Family Panel Studies, we identify the subjects studied by vocational college and university graduates, with the latter group further divided into ordinary and key universities. While the returns are around 8-10% to attending colleges and ordinary universities, there are higher returns of 12-16% per annum to attending the more…

In Chapter 1, I investigate the migration response of college students to tuition differences between states, using variation introduced by tuition regional reciprocity agreements. Out-of-state students generally pay higher tuition than in-state students, but reciprocity agreements reduce the premium paid by students from other states in the…

This article tests effectively maintained inequality theory against the case of China. Employing Chinese College Student Survey data from 2012, the study elaborates on the rationale and causes behind the expansion of higher education over the last two decades and the impact this has had on the system. Rather than empowering disadvantaged students,…

This paper assesses the impact of the mismatch between a college major and job on college graduates' early career earnings using a sample from China. On average, a major-job mismatched college graduate is found to suffer from an income loss that is much lower than the penalty documented in previous studies. The income losses are also found to be…

In the last two decades, we have witnessed a rapid expansion of higher education in Mainland China and Taiwan, recording a significant increase in higher education enrolments in these two Chinese societies. The massification of higher education in China and Taiwan has inevitably resulted in an oversupply of university graduates, with growing…

Visa policies in the United States restrict job opportunities and job mobility for U.S.-trained PhDs who hold a temporary visa, a group that accounts for 40 percent of newly graduated PhDs in science and engineering. The Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992 (CSPA) allowed Chinese students to be eligible for permanent residence in the United…

In 2009, a reform in teachers' pay, linking remuneration to performance, was implemented in China. The intention was to improve the quality of education by making teachers more diligent and creative and removing the inequality in pay between teachers in different schools. A review of this reform reveals that it has resolved the problem of…

The current research aimed to develop a multidimensional measure of career locus of control (LOC) and examine its predictive validity on objective and subjective career success among Chinese employees. Items of career LOC were generated based on literature review of the significant predictors of career success, as well as the open-ended responses…

Chinese college graduates have faced increasing labor market competition since the expansion of tertiary education. Given rigid market demand, graduates with realistic earnings expectations may experience a more efficient job search. Using the 2008 MYCOS College Graduate Employment Survey, this study finds that a 1000 yuan reduction in a…

We report evidence that university reputation affects wages of bachelors in China. An unconditional difference between a top-100 university and a top 400-500 university of 23% is increased to some 28% by adding controls. Within the top-100 there is no differentiation in pay-off. Self-rated quality of high school, while affecting quality of…