Academic Appointments
2020-
Assistant Professor @ Department of Economics, Harvard University
2018-2020
Prize Fellow @ Joint Center for History and Economics, Harvard
Postdoctoral Fellow @ J-PAL, MIT
Publications
Persistent Political Engagement: Social Interactions and the Dynamics of Protest Movements
Leonardo Bursztyn, Davide Cantoni, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Y. Jane Zhang
American Economic Review: Insights, Forthcoming
[Show/hide abstract]
[Current draft (March 2020)]
We test whether participation in one protest within a political movement increases subsequent protest attendance, and why. To identify an effect of protest participation, we randomly, indirectly incentivize Hong Kong university students into participation in an antiauthoritarian protest. To identify the effects of social interactions, we randomize the intensity of this treatment across major-cohort cells. We find that experimentally-induced protest participation is significantly associated with protest attendance one year later, though political beliefs and preferences are unaffected. Persistent political engagement is greatest among individuals in the cells with highest treatment intensity, suggesting that social interactions sustained persistent political engagement.
Polarization and Public Health: Partisan Differences in Social Distancing during the Coronavirus Pandemic
Hunt Allcott, Levi Boxell, Jacob Conway, Matthew Gentzkow, Michael Thaler, David Y. Yang
Journal of Public Economics, Forthcoming
[Show/hide abstract]
[Final draft (July 2020)]
[NBER WP]
Media coverage: [CNN]
[New York Times]
[Wired]
[Mother Jones]
[Reuters]
[LA Times]
[FiveThirtyEight]
[USA Today]
[Newsweek]
Disparities in Coronavirus 2019 Reported Incidence, Knowledge, and Behavior Among US Adults
Marcella Alsan, Stefanie Stantcheva, David Y. Yang, David Cutler
Journal of American Medical Association (Network Open), 3(6):e2012403 (June 2020)
[Show/hide abstract]
[Published version]
How do reported incidence, knowledge, and behaviors regarding coronavirus disease 2019 vary across sociodemographic characteristics in the US? In this survey study, the largest differences in coronavirus disease 2019–related knowledge and behaviors were associated with race/ ethnicity, sex, and age. African American participants, men, and people younger than 55 years were less likely to know how the disease is spread, were less likely to know the symptoms of coronavirus disease 2019, washed their hands less frequently, and left the home more often. These findings suggest that more effort is needed to increase accurate information and encourage appropriate behaviors among minority communities, men, and younger people.
The Impact of Media Censorship: 1984 or Brave New World?
Yuyu Chen, David Y. Yang
American Economic Review, Vol.109, No.6 (June 2019)
[Show/hide abstract]
[Published version]
[Final draft (December 2018)]
Media coverage: [New York Times]
[AEA Research Highlights]
Media censorship is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. We conduct a field experiment in China to measure the effects of providing citizens with access to an uncensored Internet. We track subjects' media consumption, beliefs regarding the media, economic beliefs, political attitudes, and behaviors over 18 months. We find 4 main results: (i) free access alone does not induce subjects to acquire politically sensitive information; (ii) temporary encouragement leads to a persistent increase in acquisition, indicating that demand is not permanently low; (iii) acquisition brings broad, substantial, and persistent changes to knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and intended behaviors; and (iv) social transmission of information is statistically significant but small in magnitude. We calibrate a simple model to show that the combination of low demand for uncensored information and the moderate social transmission means China's censorship apparatus may remain robust to a large number of citizens receiving access to an uncensored Internet.
Protests as Strategic Games: Experimental Evidence from Hong Kong's Anti-Authoritarian Movement
Davide Cantoni, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Y. Jane Zhang
Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol.134, No.2 (May 2019)
[Show/hide abstract]
[Published version]
[Final draft (October 2018)]
[NBER WP (January 2017)]
Social scientists have long viewed the decision to protest as strategic, with an individual's participation a function of her beliefs about others' turnout. We conduct a field experiment that re-calibrates individuals' beliefs about others' protest participation, in the context of Hong Kong's ongoing anti-authoritarian movement. We elicit subjects' planned participation in an upcoming protest and their prior beliefs about others' participation, in an incentivized manner. One day before the protest, we randomly provide a subset of subjects with truthful information about others' protest plans, and elicit posterior beliefs about protest turnout, again in an incentivized manner. After the protest, we elicit subjects' actual participation. This allows us to identify the causal effects of positively and negatively updated beliefs about others' protest participation on subjects' own turnout. In contrast with the assumptions of many recent models of protest participation, we consistently find evidence of strategic substitutability. We provide guidance regarding plausible sources of strategic substitutability that can be incorporated into theoretical models of protests.
Curriculum and Ideology
Davide Cantoni, Yuyu Chen, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Y. Jane Zhang
Journal of Political Economy, Vol.125, No.2 (April 2017)
[Show/hide abstract]
[Published version]
[Final draft (October 2015)]
[Previous draft (April 2014)]
Media coverage: [Bloomberg View]
[Foreign Policy]
[Deutsche Welle (Chinese)]
We study the causal effect of school curricula on students' political attitudes, exploiting a major textbook reform in China between 2004 and 2010. The sharp, staggered introduction of the new curriculum across provinces allows us to identify its causal effects. We examine government documents articulating desired consequences of the reform, and identify changes in textbooks reflecting these aims. A survey we conducted reveals that the reform was often successful in shaping attitudes, while evidence on behavior is mixed. Studying the new curriculum led to more positive views of China's governance, changed views on democracy, and increased skepticism toward free markets.
Working Papers
Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis
Marcella Alsan, Luca Bragheri, Sarah Eichmeyer, Minjeong Joyce Kim, Stefanie Stantcheva, David Y. Yang
[Show/hide abstract]
[Current draft (October 2020)] [NBER WP (October 2020)]
The respect for and protection of civil liberties are one of the fundamental roles of the state, and many consider civil liberties as sacred and "nontradable." Using cross-country representative surveys that cover 15 countries and over 370,000 respondents, we study whether and the extent to which citizens are willing to trade o! civil liberties during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the largest crises in recent history. We find four main results. First, many around the world reveal a clear willingness to trade off civil liberties for improved public health conditions. Second, consistent across countries, exposure to health risks is associated with citizens' greater willingness to trade o! civil liberties, though individuals who are more economically disadvantaged are less willing to do so. Third, attitudes concerning such trade-offs are elastic to information. Fourth, we document a gradual decline and then plateau in citizens’ overall willingness to sacrifice rights and freedom as the pandemic progresses, though the underlying correlation between individuals' worry about health and their attitudes over the trade-offs has been remarkably constant. Our results suggest that citizens do not view civil liberties as sacred values; rather, they are willing to trade off civil liberties more or less readily, at least in the short-run, depending on their own circumstances and information.
Data-intensive Innovation and the State: Evidence from AI Firms in China
Martin Beraja, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman
[Show/hide abstract]
[Current draft (August 2020)] [NBER WP (August 2020)]
Data-intensive technologies, like AI, are increasingly widespread. We argue that the direction of innovation and growth in data-intensive economies may be crucially shaped by the state because: (i) the state is a key collector of data and (ii) data is sharable across uses within firms, potentially generating economies of scope. We study a prototypical setting: facial recognition AI in China. Collecting comprehensive data on firms and government procurement contracts, we find evidence of economies of scope arising from government data: firms awarded contracts providing access to more government data produce both more government and commercial software. We then build a directed technical change model to study the implications of government data access for the direction of innovation, growth, and welfare. We conclude with three applications showing how data-intensive innovation may be shaped by the state: both directly, by setting industrial policy; and indirectly, by choosing surveillance levels and privacy regulations.
Stereotypes and Politics
Pedro Bordalo, Marco Tabellini, David Y. Yang
[Show/hide abstract]
[Current draft (July 2020)]
[NBER WP (May 2020)]
We examine US voters’ beliefs about views held by Republicans and Democrats. While individuals exaggerate partisan differences on a range of socioeconomic and political issues, we document that belief distortions are larger on issues that individuals consider more important. We organize these facts using a model of stereotypes where distortions are stronger for issues that are more salient to voters. In line with the model, belief distortions are predictable from the differences across parties, in particular the relative prevalence of extreme attitudes. To assess the impact of issue salience, we show that the end of the Cold War in 1991, which shifted US voters’ attention away from external threats and towards domestic issues, led to an increase in perceived polarization in the latter, and more so for issues with more stereotypical partisan differences. The reverse pattern occurred after the terrorist attacks in 2001, when attention swung back towards external threats. The distortions we identify are quantitatively signicant, and could have important consequences for political engagement as such distortions strongly predict voting turnout.
Persistence through Revolutions
Alberto Alesina, Marlon Seror, David Y. Yang, Yang You, Weihong Zeng
[Show/hide abstract]
[Current draft (July 2020)]
[NBER WP (July 2020)]
Media coverage: [NBER Digest]
Can efforts to eradicate inequality in wealth and education eliminate intergenerational persistence of socioeconomic status? The Chinese Communist Revolution in the 1950s and Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 aimed to do exactly that. Using newly digitized archival data and linked contemporary household surveys and census, we show that the revolutions were effective in homogenizing the population economically and culturally in the short run. However, the pattern of inequality that characterized the pre-revolution generation re-emerges today. Grandchildren of the pre-revolution elites earn 17 percent more than those from nonelite households. In addition, the grandchildren of pre-revolution elites differ in their cultural values: they are less averse to inequality, more individualistic, more pro-market, more proeducation, and more likely to see hard work as critical to success. Through intergenerational transmission, socioeconomic conditions and cultural traits thus survived one of the most aggressive attempts to eliminate differences in the population and to foster mobility.
Historical Traumas and the Roots of Political Distrust: Political Inference from the Great Chinese Famine
Yuyu Chen, David Y. Yang
[Show/hide abstract]
[Current draft (October 2019)]
Political trust is the foundation of authoritarian regimes’ legitimacy, and it is often sustained by propaganda. When does propaganda reach its limit, and what are the consequences when propaganda is falsified? We study the causal effect of the Great Chinese Famine (1958-1961) on survivors’ political distrust. Policy failures led to the Famine, but the propaganda blamed drought for the disaster. Information that directly contradicted the propaganda -- experiences of severe Famine in the absence of abnormal drought conditions -- was quasi-randomly available to some citizens, but not others. Using a nationally representative survey, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy to compare individuals who were exposed to different intensities of the Famine across regions with different levels of drought during the Famine. The Famine survivors inferred the government’s liability from starvation experiences and the drought conditions, and they were more likely to dismiss the propaganda and blame the government for the Famine if they observed regular weather conditions during the Famine. As a result, these individuals expressed significantly less trust in the government. Costs of falsified propaganda are substantial, since the dampened political trust has turned into a stable political ideology. The distrust persists even half a century after the Famine, has been transmitted to the subsequent generation, and has spilled over to a broad range of political attitudes unrelated to the Famine.
The Fundamental Determinants of Anti-Authoritarianism
Davide Cantoni, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Y. Jane Zhang
[Show/hide abstract]
[Current draft (March 2017)]
Media coverage: [South China Morning Post]
China's Lost Generation: Changes in Beliefs and their Intergenerational Transmission
Gerard Roland, David Y. Yang
[Show/hide abstract]
[Current draft (August 2017)]
[NBER WP]
Beliefs about whether effort pays off govern some of the most fundamental choices individual make. This paper uses China’s Cultural Revolution to understand how these beliefs can be affected, how they impact behavior, and how they are transmitted across generations. During the Cultural Revolution, China’s college admission system based on entrance exams was suspended for a decade until 1976, effectively depriving an entire generation of young people of the opportunity to access higher education (the “lost generation”). Using data from a nationally representative survey, we compare cohorts who graduated from high school just before and after the college entrance exam was resumed. We find that members of the “lost generation” who missed out on college because they were born just a year or two too early believe that effort pays off to a much lesser degree, even 40 years into their adulthood. However, they invested more in their children’s education, and transmitted less of their changed beliefs to the next generation, suggesting attempts to safeguard their children from sharing their misfortunes.
Salience of History and the Preference for Redistribution
Yuyu Chen, Hui Wang, David Y. Yang
[Show/hide abstract]
[Current draft (July 2017)]
Citizens' preference for redistribution determines many key political economy outcomes. In this project, we aim to understand how do ancestors' redistributive experiences affect the descendants' preference for redistribution. We conduct a survey experiment under the historical backdrop of the wealth equalization movements during the Communist Revolution in China (1947-1956). We remind a random subset of respondents of these movements that their ancestors went through. We find that on average, making the historical experiences salient turns the respondents significantly and persistently more favorable towards government redistribution. We show that the treatment effect is not driven by changes in apolitical preferences, beliefs of current inequality, or knowledge of the movements. Salience in history influences the mental framework when respondents think of redistribution: respondents are reminded of the specific family experiences during past redistribution, and they are triggered to project similar redistribution in the future.
Policy Articles
Data-Intensive Innovation and the State: Understanding China’s AI Leadership
Martin Beraja, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman
VoxChina column (September 2020) [Link]
The impact of media censorship in China: 1984 or Brave New World?
David Y. Yang
voxDev column (May 2018) [Link]
Power to the people? China's policy trilemma in Hong Kong
Davide Cantoni, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman
London School of Economics Management Blog (October 2017) [Link]
Cultural change and intergenerational transmission: Some lessons from China's Cultural Revolution
Gerard Roland, David Y. Yang
voxEU column (August 2017) [Link]
Curriculum and ideology
Davide Cantoni, Yuyu Chen, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, Y. Jane Zhang
voxEU column (May 2014) [Link]