Xiao Yu Wang, Adjunct Assistant Professor

Please note: Xiao Yu has left the "Economics" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.

Xiao Yu Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Duke University. Her major fields of interest are development economics and microeconomic theory. She uses a combination of theoretical and empirical tools to study the equilibrium emergence, evolution, and persistence of organizations and institutional structure, particularly in the unique environments of developing economies. She believes this is important for a better understanding of inequality, and that enriching our understanding of the status quo enables the design of policies which more effectively help poor people. She specializes in understanding informal financial institutions and relationships by developing empirically-testable models and taking the theoretical predictions to data. She also studies institutions which influence the production and transmission of information, such as credit registries and media channels, as well as markets in which traditional price mechanisms fail. Professor Wang is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economics Research. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013, and her B.A. with honors in economics, in mathematics, and in the liberal arts in 2008.

Contact Info:

Office Location:	320 Social Sciences Bldg, Box 90097, Durham, NC 27708
Email Address:
Web Page:	https://sites.duke.edu/xywang/

Education:

Ph.D.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2013

Specialties:

Development Economics
Microeconomic Theory

Research Interests:

Professor Wang's major fields of interest are development economics and microeconomic theory. She uses a combination of theoretical and empirical tools to study the equilibrium emergence, evolution, and persistence of institutional structure, particularly in the unique environments of developing economies. She specializes in understanding informal financial institutions by developing empirically-testable models and taking the theoretical predictions to data. She also studies institutions which influence the production and transmission of information, such as credit registries and media channels. Her more purely theoretical interests include communication games and market design.

Curriculum Vitae  Bio

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. Wang, XY; Suarez Serrato, JC; Zhang, S, The Limits of Meritocracy: Screening Bureaucrats Under Imperfect Verifiability (March, 2017)
2. Wang, XY, Endogenous Insurance and Informal Relationships, Economic Research Initiatives at Duke (ERID) Working Paper no. 161 (February, 2015)  [abs]
3. Wang, XY, Policy-making and the adaptability of informal institutions, The World Bank Economic Review, vol. 29 no. suppl 1 (January, 2015), pp. S174-S181, Oxford University Press (OUP) [doi]  [abs]
4. Wang, XY, Risk Sorting, Portfolio Choice, and Endogenous Informal Insurance (August, 2014)
5. Wang, XY, A Note on Moral Hazard and Linear Compensation Schemes, Economic Research Initiatives at Duke (Erid) Working Paper no. 160 (July, 2013)  [abs]