Justin J. Hong
Welcome! I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Boston University.
I will be on the job market in AY 2024-2025.
Fields of Interest: Development Economics, Political Economy, Public Economics
Contact Information:
Email: hjihao@bu.edu
Mailing: Department of Economics, Boston University,
270 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Job Market Paper
The Costs of Leader Biases: Evidence from Superstitious Chinese Mayors (with Yuheng Zhao)
Presentations: CES (2024), IAAE (2024), AMES (2024), CEPR (2024), ASSA & NAWM-ES (2025)
Biased and false beliefs -- such as denialism and superstitions -- influence human decision-making, potentially including key individuals that wield considerable economic and political power. In this paper, we document the substantial macro-level impact of leaders' misbeliefs in China, exploiting prevalent Asian traditional beliefs that allow us to link quasi-random, leader-specific spatial biases to regional development within cities. Municipal zones that are supernaturally unfavorable to mayors (i.e., subject to mayors’ over-pessimism) have an average 2 percent lower GDP compared to other zones. Exploiting mayor reports and administrative micro-level data, we show reduced policy support and public investment as the key drivers. Downstream changes in firms and households further amplify the loss, with a 6% decrease in firm entry, a 4% reduction in the productivity of remaining firms, and a small population decline. Our back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests Chinese mayors' spatial misbeliefs are associated with at least a 0.1% annual GDP loss over the past two decades. Overall, our findings highlight subjective beliefs as an important determinant of leader performance, contributing to a deeper understanding of why leaders matter for economic development.
Working Papers
Corruption and Human Capital Supply for the State [R&R at Journal of Labor Economics]
Presentations/Awards: Stanford DevPEC (2022), NEUDC (2022), ASSA Annual Meeting (2023); Rosenstein-Rodan Prize (2024)
I study the impact of corruption crackdown on human capital supply for the state, exploiting China's staggered anti-corruption inspections. Using unique applicant data from state organizations, I find that anti-corruption induces positive selection for integrity and prosociality into the state sector, without significantly affecting overall ability. These shifts in supply are associated with enhanced work performance. Changes in occupational preferences corroborate static talent allocation as a salient mechanism, in which treated honest types show higher preferences for state jobs -- even when conditioned on ability and family background. I further document dynamic effects wherein households increase investment in human capital and the integrity of the next generation. Together, these findings highlight reward structures as an important determinant of the state sector's human capacity.
Risk-Taking and Public Leadership: Evidence from Chinese Villages [Submitted]
This paper studies the causal impact of risk-taking on public leadership, by exploiting Chinese zodiac culture that creates within-individual variation in risk appetite. Employing a representative village panel, I find that lower risk-taking of village heads leads to improved governance processes and greater responsiveness. I also observe consistent expenditure changes, with higher public good spending and a comparable decline in administration spending that is prone to misuse. However, risk-averse leaders are also less likely to promote policy innovation. Collectively, risk avoidance can improve leader performance when incentives for responsiveness are limited, with a potential trade-off between accountability and public entrepreneurship.
Host Favoritism and Talent Selection in Chinese Science Olympiads (with Xuan Li)
[Draft: 2024] [R&R at Journal of Law, Economics & Organization]
We study favoritism in the selection of elite scientific talent, by examining the relationship between host institution affiliation and performance in the Chinese Science Olympiad, where a gold medal guarantees a student's admission to top universities. Using hand-collected participant-level data (2003 - 2021), we find that host-affiliated students have a significantly higher winning probability, and the effect is more pronounced in host provinces where corruption norms are more prevalent. We present evidence suggestive of cheating behavior using a portion of the contest vulnerable to information leakage, as well as the centralized post-Olympiad selection outside the control of host provinces. Together, our findings shed light on the crucial role of organizational structure in designing equitable assessment systems for talent.
Not Always a Panacea: History Education and Identity-Building in Taiwan (with Yuhan Lyu)
[*Pre-PhD research: Draft] [Conditionally accepted at Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization]
Using novel data from Taiwan, we examine the impact of history curricula on national identity. The high school curriculum reform of September 2006 separates the history of Taiwan from Chinese chronology and increases Taiwan-oriented content to transmit Taiwanese identity. We document an unintended ``backlash'' that individuals studying the new curriculum are more likely to report both greater Taiwanese and Chinese identities. We show endogenous changes in information demand as a prominent mechanism: treated high schoolers show greater identity awareness and acquire more information related to both identities, leading to dual-identity recognition. We further observe consistent attitudinal changes, with milder political axes and an increased likelihood of voting for median candidates and abstention.
Work in Progress
Southbound Bureaucrats and the Making of China: 1949 - 2019 (with Yuheng Zhao)
Licensed Corruption (with Yiming Cao, Raymond Fisman, Xuan Li, and Michael Luca)
Robots and State Capacity (with Yiming Cao)
Legal Capacity and State-Building