Academic Positions

  • Present 2022

    Lecturer

    RMIT University,
    School of Economics, Finance and Marketing

  • 2022 2021

    Research Associate

    University of Sydney,
    School of Economics

  • 2021 2018

    Academic Tutor

    University of Sydney,
    School of Economics

  • 2021 2016

    Research Assistant

    University of Sydney,
    School of Economics

Education

  • Doctorate 2021

    Ph.D. in Experimental Economics

    University of Sydney
    School of Economics

  • Masters.2016

    Master of Economic Analysis

    University of Sydney

  • B.A.2014

    Bachelor of Economics

    Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

Merit-based selective summer school

Honors and Awards

  • 2021
    Visualise Your Thesis Competition Finalist
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    Visualise Your Thesis is an international competition that challenges graduate researchers to summarise their research in an engaging, 60-second visual multimedia presentation.
  • 2019
    Dean's Citation for Excellence in Tutorials
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    This award is rewarded to 10 tutors each year for their contribution in creating an effective learning environment.
  • 2019
    Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence Student Travel Award
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    This grant provides $6,000 support for me to undertake short academic visit in New York University and University of Pennsylvania.
  • 2019
    Faculty of Arts and Social Science Doctoral Research Travel Grant Scheme
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    This grant provides $3,500 support for me to undertake primary research involving significant travel outside of Sydney.
  • 2018
    The University of Sydney Postgraduate Research Support Scheme
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    PRSS provides University funding for travel to, attendance at, and participation in conferences around the world.
  • 2017
    CPC Summer Scholarship
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    The Charlies Perkins Centre offers a select group of high-achieving students enrolled at University of Sydney, the opportunity to learn valuable research skills and learn from senior researchers. In 2016, 10 students were selected.
  • 2017
    TOP100 International Student Award
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    Performance Education Group sponsored the ‘International Student Award’ that recognises the most outstanding international student.
  • 2016
    Top100 Australia Future Leaders
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    Annually, in conjunction with the AFR, GradConnection announces the Top100 Future Leader. I am one of finalists for "International Student Award" and "Westpac Banking, Insurance and Financial Service Award".
  • 2014
    Chinese Government Scholarship
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    Annually, Chinese government sponsors 300 students from all districts in China to go overseas for further study.
  • 2012
    Wang Huiyao Scholarship
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    Mr. Wang, president of of Center for China and Globalisation, sets up his scholarship at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. Up to 5 students will be awarded every year.
  • 2010
    First class Scholarship
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    A school-wide scholarship set up for high-achieving students annually at Guandong University of Foreign Studies.

Publication

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    Increased risk-taking, not loss tolerance, drives adolescents’ propensity to choose risky prospects more often under peer observation, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

    Relative to adults, adolescents make more welfare-decreasing decisions, especially in the presence of peers. The consequences of these decisions result in substantial individual and societal losses in terms of lives lost, injury, hospitalization costs, and foregone opportunities. In this paper, we use laboratory within-subject and between-subject experiments with younger (12-17 years old) and older (18-24 years old) adolescents to identify which economic preference is affected by peer observation in adolescence — risk attitudes in gains, risk attitudes in losses, and/or loss aversion. We find that while observed by peers, older adolescents become more risk-tolerant both in gains and in losses but more loss averse. We discuss the potential mechanisms driving the result and its implications for policy.

    Link to paper
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    Present bias for monetary and dietary rewards, Experimental Economics

    Economists model self-control problems through time-inconsistent preferences. Empirical tests of these preferences largely rely on experimental elicitation using monetary rewards, with several recent studies failing to find present bias for money. In this paper, we compare estimates of present bias for money with estimates for healthy and unhealthy foods. In a within-subjects longitudinal experiment with 697 low-income Chinese high school students, we find strong present bias for both money and food, and that individual measures of present bias are moderately correlated across reward types. Our experimental measures of time preferences over both money and foods predict field behaviors including alcohol consumption and academic performance.

    Link to paper

Working Paper

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    Present-biased time preference for monetary rewards: a meta-analysis

    We identified 63 articles with 85 estimates of present bias parameter. The literature shows that people are on average present biased towards money (β=0.82), but substantial heterogeneity across studies exists. The source of heterogeneity comes from the subject pool, methodology (e.g. BDM auction), geographical location of data collection, payment method, the study place (e.g. online vs. lab). Individuals show stronger present bias towards real effort and health outcomes compared to monetary rewards. There is evidence of publication bias in the direction of overestimating present-bias, but the present bias still exists after correcting for potential publication bias

Work in progress

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    Dynamic prospect theory - two core decision theories coexist in the gambling behavior of monkeys and human beings

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    Reference point in general population

    Searching for the reference point used by general population.

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    Discrimination and investment decisions (data collection in progress)

    Discrimination, based on race, gender, or religion, is a well-documented phenomenon that leads to disadvantageous financial, labour market, academic, and social outcomes for those who experience it because of the decisions made by those who discriminate against them. But does experiencing discrimination change people’s subsequent decision-making even when they are no longer discriminated against? To answer this question, we designed a novel experiment to examine how discrimination affects investment decisions when the investment outcomes are ambiguous and when they are risky. In our within-subject study, we introduce discrimination by varying the chance of receiving a small bonus (5% vs 95% chance) that determines participant’s explicitly presented ranking in the group. We find that after being discriminated against (only 5% chance of a bonus), participants are more ambiguity averse but their risk attitudes do not change. This effect is stronger for men than women. We investigate whether wealth can mitigate the impact of discrimination on subsequent investments. Finally, we establish a correlation between survey and behavioural measures of ambiguity attitudes to facilitate the use of quick and low-cost measurement of ambiguity preferences.

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    Endowment effect after a loss: is it still there? (data collection in progress)

    The endowment effect describes the tendency for people who own a good to value it more than people who do not. In this paper, we propose a model based on neuroeconomics perspective and suggest that the relationship between the expectation and the ownership level can predict when the endowment effect occurs, does not occur and even reverse. We design an experiment to test our hypothesis: when subjects’ expectation exceeds the current ownership level, a reverse endowment effect will be observed. With 70 subjects, after controlling for expectation and subject misconception, we find evidence (though weak) support our hypothesis.

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    Endowment effect beyond one hour – how does the duration of ownership affect willingness to accept (data collection in progress)

    The endowment effect refers to the phenomenon that ownership of an object results in a higher valuation for that object, usually represented in the form of the WTP-WTA gap. Different models (e.g. loss aversion, diminishing marginal utility) are proposed to explain the WTP-WTA gap. However, nearly all of the existing literature focuses on the instant endowment effect, where different models generate same predictions on the WTP-WTA gap. This disables researchers to study which model is better in explaining the WTP-WTA gap. In this paper, we discuss different predictions of traditional explanations on the existence and strength of WTP-WTA gap when the duration of ownership is longer. We find loss aversion predicts that the WTA will monotonically increase with the duration of current ownership, whereas diminishing marginal utility predicts WTA will firstly increase but then decrease as time passes. In the experiment, we extend the duration of ownership to 120 minutes (1 time longer than the duration studied in the current literature) and find evidence to support diminishing marginal utility theory.

  • 2022

    - ESA Virtual Asia Pacific meeting

  • 2021

    - Society of Neuroeconomics Annual Meeting

    - Sydney Experimental and Behavioural Research Brownbag Seminars

  • 2020

    - Society of Neuroeconomics Annual Meeting

    - ESA Virtual Global meeting

    - Sydney Experimental and Behavioural Research Brownbag Seminars

  • 2019

    - University of Pennsylvania weekly seminar

    - ESA North American Conference

    - Society of Neuroeconomics Annual meeting

    - The Seventh Summer School of Econometric Society

    - Sydney Workshop on Experimental Economics and Theory

  • 2018

    - Society for Neuroeconomics Annual Meeting

    - Charles Perkins Centre Early to Mid-Career Researcher Symposium

    - Behavioural and Experimental Economics and Finance Workshop

  • 2017

    - Behavioural Economics: Foundations and Applied Research

    - Australia New Zealand Workshop on Experimental Economics

  • 2016

    - Sydney Experimental and Behavioural Research Brownbag Seminars