Segerson

Zheng Xu Defends Dissertation, Stays at Harvard

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ZhengDefenseOn August 28th, Zheng Xu defended his dissertation, “Developing in the Era of Globalization: The Case of China” written under the supervision of major advisor Professor Delia Furtado and associate advisors, Professor Nishith Prakash, Professor Kathleen Segerson, and Professor Richard Freeman from Harvard University.

Zheng’s dissertation studies how globalization has reshaped China in terms of the labor market, environment, and media. The first chapter examines how rising demand for Chinese exports affects Chinese labor markets. Particular emphasis is given to how the massive internal migration in China shapes the labor market consequences of trade. The second chapter studies whether party-newspapers in China are less likely to report local pollution events and whether the difference distorts households’ self-protective behaviors against potential health risks. The third chapter uses the list of environmental goods endorsed by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to test whether export production improves air quality in China through adoption of green inputs.

Since September of 2013, Zheng has been a research fellow in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. In 2014, he received a CLAS Graduate Fellowship which helped support his time at Harvard. Zheng has already started a new position as postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities.

Congratulations, Zheng!

Professors Miceli and Segerson Cited in The Economist

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micelisegersonAn article on land assembly in developing countries published in the May 2nd-8th 2015 edition of The Economist cited a paper by economics professors Thomas Miceli and Kathleen Segerson. The article discusses problems developing countries face in assembling land for large-scale economic development projects.

The author writes, “A theoretical model set out in a paper published in 2011 by Thomas Miceli and Kathleen Segerson of the University of Connecticut shows that when a buyer has to negotiate in sequence with sellers of contiguous plots of land, the price of each successive sale will rise. Landowners know the project cannot proceed unless the buyer acquires all the plots he needs. The more he acquires, the greater the cost of abandoning the project. The ransom those yet to sell can demand increases accordingly.”

The article referred to is “Land Assembly and the Holdout Problem Under Sequential Bargaining,” which was published in the American Law and Economics Review, Vol. 14 (2012): 372-390.