Elaine M. Liu

We study the role of relative childhood and adolescent obesity in the development of noncognitive abilities. We employ a novel identification strategy, utilizing the fact that one's body size is a relative concept and there are large variations in body sizes across MSAs. We focus on children who move between MSAs. Controlling for origin-destination state pair fixed effects, we find that a 10 percentile point increase in relative body size would increase behavioral problems by 2 percentile points. This effect is of a similar magnitude to a two-year reduction in maternal education.

How malleable is alcohol consumption? Specifically, how much is alcohol consumption driven by the current environment versus individual characteristics? We analyze changes in alcohol purchases when consumers move from one state to another in the United States. Right after a move, movers' alcohol purchases converge sharply towards the average level in their destination state, implying that the current environment explains about two-thirds of the differences in alcohol purchases. The adjustment takes place both on the extensive and intensive margin.

This paper examines the impact of a property rights reform in rural China that allowed farmers to lease out their land. We find the reform led to increases in land rental activity in rural households. Our results indicate that the formalization of leasing rights resulted in a redistribution of land toward more productive farmers. Consequently, output and aggregate productivity increased by 8 and 10%, respectively. We also find that the reform increased the responsiveness of land allocation across crops to changes in crop prices.

Many studies find that women are more risk averse than men. This paper takes advantage of a rare setting in which children of the matrilineal Mosuo and the traditionally patriarchal Han attend the same schools in Yunnan, China. We find that Mosuo girls become increasingly risk averse after spending more time with Han students. By age 11, Mosuo girls are also more risk averse than Mosuo boys. Using random roommate assignment for boarding students, we find Mosuo boys who have fewer Mosuo roommates behave more similarly to Han boys. This shows that risk preferences are shaped by culture and malleable in response to new environments.

This paper evaluates parental response to non-cognitive variation across siblings in rural Gansu province, China. More educated mothers appear to compensate for differences between their children, investing more in a child who exhibits greater non-cognitive deficits, while less educated mothers reinforce these differences. There is evidence that compensatory investments are associated with the narrowing of non-cognitive deficits over time for children of more educated mothers, while no comparable pattern holds in households with less educated mothers.

We compare participants in an artefactual field experiment in urban China with the survey population of migrants from which they were recruited. Experimental participants were more educated, more likely to lend money to friends, and worked fewer hours than the general population. They differ significantly from non-participants in terms of regression coefficients, such as the effects of wealth and marital status on the probability of being self-employed and distance migrated.

This paper uses the 1918 influenza pandemic in Taiwan as a natural experiment to test whether in utero conditions affect long-run developmental outcomes. We find that cohorts in utero during the pandemic are less educated, shorter as teenagers, and more likely to have kidney disease, glaucoma, respiratory problems and diabetes in old age than other birth cohorts.

This paper investigates how Confucianism affects individual decision making in Taiwan and China. We find that Chinese subjects became significantly more risk loving, less loss averse, and more impatient after being primed with Confucianism, whereas Taiwanese subjects became significantly less present-based and more trustworthy. Combining evidence from incentivized laboratory experiments and subjective survey measures, we find that Chinese and Taiwanese subjects reacted differently to Confucian priming.

This paper examines the role of individual risk attitudes in the decision to adopt Bt cotton in China. I conducted a survey and field experiment to elicit the risk preferences of Chinese farmers. Expanding measurement beyond expected utility theory to incorporate prospect theory, I find that farmers who are more risk averse or more loss averse adopt Bt cotton later, while farmers who overweight small probabilities adopt Bt cotton earlier.

Using survey and artefactual field experiment results, we find that farmers who are more risk averse use greater quantities of pesticides. Farmers who are more loss averse use lesser quantities of pesticides, consistent with a framework in which farmers behave in a loss averse manner in the health domain and place more weight on the importance of health over money in the loss domain.

We present a novel model of apologies and malpractice to examine whether state-level apology laws affect malpractice lawsuits and settlements. Using a difference-in-differences estimation, we find that apology laws expedite the resolution process and result in the greatest reduction in average payment size and settlement time in cases involving severe patient outcomes.

We estimate that apologizing to a patient in medical malpractice litigation reduces the average payout by $32,000. Apologies are most valuable for cases involving obstetrics and anesthesia, for cases involving infants, and for cases involving improper management by the physician and failures to diagnose.

We study the impact of distant connections on marijuana use. Leveraging the Facebook Social Connectedness Index, we explore the impact of connections to states where recreational marijuana use is legalized on marijuana use and workplace drug testing positivity rates in areas where marijuana remains illegal. Areas that are more connected to legalized states exhibit higher rates of marijuana use even after controlling for geographic proximity to legalized states, suggesting that standard difference-in-differences approaches underestimate the direct effect on states that legalize.

We study how the release of ChatGPT in November 2022 affected firm hiring demand across 186 countries, using 77.8 million online job postings from 37,395 firm-country pairs over 2021Q2–2025Q3. We construct predetermined firm-country AI exposure from 2019 occupational composition and estimate a continuous difference-in-differences design. The results reveal a divergent global adjustment. In advanced economies, posting volumes decline gradually beginning three to four quarters after ChatGPT's release, with compositional shifts toward fewer high-substitution vacancies emerging later. In developing economies, posting volumes begin to decline earlier in the event window, with compositional changes following by the third quarter. These patterns are consistent with generative AI reshaping hiring demand differently across development groups, with developing economies adjusting earlier and with clearer evidence on the composition margin than on overall posting volumes.

We examine the impact of a magnitude-7.3 earthquake on fetal losses and birth outcomes in Taiwan. Our analysis suggests that a negative shock during the first trimester increases fetal losses by 4.4 percent, with almost all losses attributable to male fetuses. A later negative shock leads to worse pregnancy outcomes. We also find evidence of positive selection of surviving fetuses.

This paper examines the impact of poor in utero environment caused by severe typhoons on psychological well-being later in life. Exploiting time and geographical variation, we compare the mental health of individuals with higher expected in utero exposure to severe typhoons in landfall counties to those with no fetal exposure. A one-unit increase in expected in utero exposure increases the likelihood of an adult mental illness diagnosis by 2.2 percentage points (11% relative to the mean). The incidence of mood disorder and use of antidepressants increased by more than 50%. Effects are more prominent for women.

In 2003, one in four marriages in Taiwan involved a bride from a foreign, often substantially poorer, country. Using a 2003 policy reversal tightening visa requirements, we find that domestic women responded to foreign bride competition by increasing fertility. We also find that domestic marriages were less likely to dissolve, consistent with the presence of young children stabilizing marriage.

This paper performs a meta-analysis to investigate how changes over time, model specifications, differences in data sets, and variable definitions contribute to differences in estimates of returns to education in China. Return to education has increased approximately 0.2 percentage points a year since the economic reform, with returns for rural-to-urban migrant workers 2.3 percentage points lower than for urban workers.