# Guanyi Yang — research

> Economist at Colorado College. Heterogeneous-agent macroeconomics, labor and education, environmental valuation (dark skies), emerging-market business cycles, children and schooling in rural China. Each paper below has a page with the abstract, main numbers, scope limits and all public versions, plus a plain-text llms.txt.

## Papers

- [Contingent Behavior Modeling for Dark Skies Valuation at Great Sand Dunes National Park](https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/dark-skies-great-sand-dunes/): If the night sky at Great Sand Dunes National Park were as bright as an average suburb, visitors’ consumer surplus would fall by about 23–24 percent; at urban brightness it would fall 42–44 percent. Each unit increase in satellite-measured nightlight cuts visitation by about 0.05 days per visitor over five years. (American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2026). Summary: https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/dark-skies-great-sand-dunes/llms.txt
- [Macroeconomics of Racial Disparities: Discrimination, Labor Market, and Wealth](https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/racial-disparities-hiring-discrimination/): In a search-and-matching model with prejudiced and non-prejudiced firms calibrated to the U.S., hiring discrimination accounts for about 57 percent of the Black–White unemployment gap, 48 percent of the average wage gap and 16 percent of the median wealth gap; removing it raises Black workers’ welfare by 12.9 percent and aggregate welfare by 1.5 percent. (Working paper, 2026). Summary: https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/racial-disparities-hiring-discrimination/llms.txt
- [Better Late Than Never: Macroeconomic Impact of Intermittent College Enrollment and Tuition Subsidies](https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/intermittent-college-enrollment/): Allowing people to enroll in college at any age, rather than only right after high school, accounts for about one quarter of the total welfare value of college in a life-cycle general equilibrium model; the gain is largest for people who start adult life with the least wealth. A nationwide tuition-free program raises the share with a bachelor’s degree from 25 to 78 percent and welfare by nearly 40 percent. (Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 2025). Summary: https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/intermittent-college-enrollment/llms.txt
- [Global Financial Risk, Equity Returns and Economic Activity in Emerging Countries](https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/global-financial-risk-equity-returns-emerging-markets/): Global financial risk shocks reach emerging economies mainly through equity markets, not sovereign spreads: when the response of equity returns to the VIX is shut down, the share of output variance explained by global financial risk falls from about 10 percent to 2 percent, while shutting down the spread response changes almost nothing. (Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2024). Summary: https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/global-financial-risk-equity-returns-emerging-markets/llms.txt
- [Unemployment Dynamics and Informality in Small Open Economies](https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/informality-unemployment-small-open-economies/): Emerging market economies have less volatile and less countercyclical unemployment than small open advanced economies, despite larger output swings, and a two-sector search model shows that a bigger informal sector explains much of the difference: informal jobs absorb adjustment that would otherwise run through unemployment. (European Economic Review, 2022). Summary: https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/informality-unemployment-small-open-economies/llms.txt
- [Sibling Spillovers in Rural China: A Story of Sisters](https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/sibling-spillovers-rural-china/): In rural China, each year a younger sibling spends in school raises the elder sibling’s Chinese test score by 1.42 percentage points, and by 2.26 points when the younger sibling is a girl; there is no significant effect when the younger sibling is a boy. The channel appears to be a more academic home environment rather than more parental spending or attention. (China Economic Review, 2022). Summary: https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/sibling-spillovers-rural-china/llms.txt
- [How Much Does Schooling Disutility Matter?](https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/schooling-disutility/): Adding a disutility-of-schooling term to a structural education-choice model is equivalent to assuming a relationship between wealth, risk and schooling: with the term present, the utility return to education falls with wealth and, when agents have a precautionary saving motive, rises with the riskiness of future consumption. (Research in Economics, 2021). Summary: https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/schooling-disutility/llms.txt
- [Does Wealth Matter? An Assessment of China’s Rural-Urban Migration on the Education of Left-Behind Children](https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/left-behind-children-parental-migration-wealth/): Parental migration raises the chance that a left-behind child in rural China is enrolled in school on time when the family is poor, but the benefit shrinks as family wealth rises and reverses above a house size of about 148 square meters; poorer migrant parents compensate for lost time by spending more on schooling. (China Economic Review, 2020). Summary: https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/left-behind-children-parental-migration-wealth/llms.txt
- [Welfare Under Friction and Uncertainty: General Equilibrium Evaluation of Temporary Employment in the U.S.](https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/temporary-employment-us-welfare/): In a U.S.-calibrated general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms, temporary contracts act as a buffer against firing costs and rising firm-level risk, reducing the welfare loss from higher firing costs by about 1.3 percent, but they do not restore the efficiency lost to those frictions and are not equivalent to cutting firing costs. (Research in Economics, 2018). Summary: https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/temporary-employment-us-welfare/llms.txt
- [How Much Versus Who: Which Social Norms Information Is More Effective?](https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/social-norms-information-green-fee/): In a randomized survey of 559 college students voting on a hypothetical ‘green fee’, telling them that 85 percent of peers at other schools voted yes raised stated contributions by about $7–8 (roughly 25 percent), while telling them the dollar range of peer fees lowered contributions by about $8–9; given both pieces of information, the effects cancelled. (Applied Economics, 2016). Summary: https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/social-norms-information-green-fee/llms.txt
- [The Effect of College Major on Labor Market Outcomes of Chinese Immigrants: An Examination of Undergraduate Major Choices and Their Impact on Employment and Earnings](https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/college-major-chinese-immigrants/): Among college-educated Chinese immigrant men in the 2009 American Community Survey, 36 percent majored in engineering and all five most common majors were in STEM or business, a pattern statistically different from Japanese and Korean immigrants and native-born whites; a major’s popularity among Chinese immigrants is weakly and positively related to its employment probability and earnings. (Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 2015). Summary: https://yangguanyi.github.io/papers/college-major-chinese-immigrants/llms.txt

## Themes

- [Economics of the night sky](https://yangguanyi.github.io/themes/night-sky/)
- [College access, human capital and life-cycle risk](https://yangguanyi.github.io/themes/college-lifecycle/)
- [Racial disparities in labor markets and wealth](https://yangguanyi.github.io/themes/race-macro/)
- [Emerging markets: informality and global financial shocks](https://yangguanyi.github.io/themes/emerging-markets/)
- [Children, families and schooling in rural China](https://yangguanyi.github.io/themes/china-education/)
- [Behavior and public goods](https://yangguanyi.github.io/themes/behavior-public-goods/)

## Profiles

- Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=nlgkEE8AAAAJ&hl=en
- RePEc: https://ideas.repec.org/f/pya376.html
- GitHub: https://github.com/yangguanyi
- CV: https://yangguanyi.github.io/cv/