Ting Zhang

Professor, University of Baltimore, USA
 

"The Role of Work from Home for Small Businesses in the COVID-19 Pandemic"

Work from home (WFH) becomes the new norm in the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether the WFH norm will fade or accelerate after the stay-at-home mandate ends is unknown. The study builds a theoretical framework based on utility maximization theory subject to a “contagion” agglomeration parameter and argues that WFH is a rational choice for small businesses. We compiled an up-to-date real-time daily and weekly multifaceted data set tracking WFH propensity from March 20 through July 28. Our empirical analysis estimated a variety of fixed-effects panel data models, population-averaged generalized linear panel-data models with the generalized estimating equation (GEE) approach, and two-level mixed-effects panel-data models. After controlling for the local pandemic, economic, and demographic factors, we find that,(1) after the stay-at-home order ended, WFH rate got higher;(2) small businesses in states with higher WFH rate are more likely to have higher increases in operating revenue, better cash flow and lower chances of temporary closure. Our robust empirics confirm our theory and hypotheses and demonstrate WFH as a potential force that expedited the “creative destruction” into a new efficient work paradigm.

Michael Delgado
 

Professor, Purdue University, USA.
 

"Peer effects in Fertility and Son Preference of China"

The increasingly unbalanced sex ratio in China and associated social challenges have been widely documented, though few studies have rigorously investigated the role that peer effects have played in this unbalanced sex ratio. This paper fills this gap by focusing on peer effects in the decision to have a second child, and to have a son. To identify peer effects, we separate out contextual and correlated effects that are known to hamper empirical studies on peer effects. The data we use comes from the 2016 data of China Family Panel Studies, and is a ten-year cohort of women aged 45-54 by 2016; we use a structural discrete choice model to estimate the peer effects. We find that peer choices significantly influence the probability that a family has a second child, but not the probability that the second child is a son. Instead, having a son is largely driven by contextual effects, and in particular, by the education level of one's peer group. Our findings indicate that recent fertility incentives such as the two-child policy may generate spillover effects that encourage more families to have a second child..
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