Welcome to My Space

My Research

My research primarily explores the economic applications of mobility data, employing a comprehensive approach that involves various methodologies such as econometric analysis, empirical IO, and machine learning. This multifaceted approach is applied to address significant questions in the realms of environmental and food fields.  

Food Access Disparity

grasping nutritional health disparities and refining the precision of food aid targeting;

Bringing the Neighborhood Farm to the Table: Can Farmers’ Markets Help Reduce Food Access Disparity?
with Cristina Connolly and Sandro Steinbach
Neighborhood disparities in food outlet access pose a significant concern for the US food system. Numerous attempts have been made in the past to address this concern, including farmer's markets. Farmers' markets offer potential benefits by providing direct access to fresh, locally sourced produce, however, the overall effectiveness of farmers’ markets in fully mitigating these disparities remains. Here, leveraging the cellphone mobility data on farmers' market visits nationwide, we quantify the extent of travel behavior to farmers' markets from 2019-2022. We link cell phone users with the socio-economic and food access characteristics of their residential areas to assess disparities in accessability and utilization of farmers’ markets across different communities. We note that low-access communities are less likely to visit farmer’s markets, travel longer distance, and experience elevated levels of income isolation, relative to their counterparts. To identify strategies that could improve market utilization, we developed a discrete choice model to analyze consumer preferences concerning farmers' market characteristics and to identify optimal locations for new farmers' markets in communities with limited access. Our results provide valuable insights for policy strategies designed to enhance food security in low food access communities.
The application of human mobility data in applied economic research holds considerable potential for deepening insights into diverse economic phenomena. This paper explores the motivations and methodologies driving the use of mobility data in economics. We begin by examining the motivations behind integrating this data source, highlighting its capacity to enhance the granularity and accuracy of economic models and theories. We continue with a comprehensive review of existing research utilizing mobility data that details its impact on understanding travel patterns, social interactions, health implications, and employment dynamics. Challenges inherent in leveraging this data, such as measurement errors, sampling biases, and data privacy concerns, are critically analyzed. The paper concludes by identifying future research opportunities that could leverage advanced computational techniques and interdisciplinary approaches to maximize the utility of mobility data in economic analyses, suggesting a robust framework for advancing our understanding of various economic phenomena.

Human Mobility

developing economic methodologies for mobility data applications;

Environmental (Dis)amenities

understanding individual behavior and preferences regarding environmental amenities and climate hazards;

Outdoor recreation plays a pivotal role in improving people’s physical and mental health, serving as a popular form of entertainment and a significant economic contributor. Limited access to these resources not only exacerbates health disparities but also deprives underserved areas of essential benefits like stress relief and community bonding, both of which are crucial for enhancing overall quality of life. This paper provides one of the first detailed analyses of water-based recreation at over 61,000 inland and coastal sites across the United States. We aim to explore disparities in recreational behavior across race, ethnicity, income, and socioeconomic status. Using Advan cellphone data from more than 70 million outdoor trips, representing 215,000 census block groups, we find that communities of color, rural areas, and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups are significantly underrepresented in water-based recreational visits. Despite living similar distances from recreational sites, these groups show notably different patterns in travel distance for water-based recreation. Additionally, we find Native Americans from underserved areas have to travel 3-5 times longer distances than other groups for water-based recreation. Our findings show that the extensive and frequent cellphone mobility data could reveal policy-relevant patterns especially those made by underserved Americans often overlooked in traditional household surveys.
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When Nature Turns Hazy: How Wildfire Smoke Affects Outdoor Recreation
With Wendong Zhang and Yau-Huo (Jimmy) Shr
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Research

Beyond Mobility Data

In addition to utilizing cell phone data, my research also utilizes large datasets from sources like retail scanners, housing transactions, and customs data to evaluate policy effectiveness and derive behavioral insights crucial for environmental and food policy making.
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Planes Overhead: How Airplane Noise Impacts Your Home’s Value
With Florian Allroggen, R. John Hansman, Christopher R. Knittel, Jing Li, and Juju Wang
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Integrating Recreational Benefits into Hedonic Property Value Models: Evidence from Iowa
With Yongjie Ji, Wendong Zhang, and Pengfei Liu
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Research

Ongoing Projects and Additional Works

Experience

Teaching, Services, and Skills

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant: Principles of Microeconomics (ISU, 2016-2019), Economics of Discrimination (ISU, 2017-2019), Intermediate Environmental and Resource Economics (ISU, 2018), Microeconomics Analysis I (ISU, 2019)

Guest lecturer: Principles of Microeconomics (Uconn, 2024)

Teaching certificate: Transforming Your Research Into Teaching (TYRIT) (ISU, 2020)

Services and Skills

Referee: National Science Foundation (NSF – SBIR/STTR), Journal of Regional Science (JRS), Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics (CJAE), Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics (JAERE), Agricultural & Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting Abstract (AAEA), Southern Economics Association Annual Meeting Abstract (SEA)

Campus and Department Services: Economics Graduate Student Association (President, 2018), Economics Graduate Student Seminar (Coordinator, 2018), China Center for Human Capital and Labor Market Research (President, 2014)

Skills: Python, Stata, Matlab, R, QGIS, SQL, Latex, Office, JavaScript 

Contact Me

I Want To Hear From You

 Please fill out the form on this section to contact with me. Or call between 9:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday

Address

Ratcliffe Hicks Arena, Unit 108, Storrs, CT 06269