Wei Sun - Economics - University of California, Riverside

Curriculum Vitae 

HOME ADDRESS 

3384 Utah Street, 

Riverside, CA 92507 

Home: (951) 684-4512 

Cell: (951) 907-1295 

Email: wei.sun@email.ucr.edu 

EDUCATION 

Wei Sun 


OFFICE ADDRESS 

Department of Economics 

3125 Sproul Hall 

University of California, Riverside 

Riverside, CA 92521-0427 

Fax: (951) 787-5685 

• Ph.D., Economics, University of California at Riverside, expected June 2005 

Dissertation: Essays in Applied Econometrics 

Dissertation Chairs: Aman Ullah 

• M.A., Economics, University of California at Riverside, December 2003 

• B.A., Economics and English, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China, June 2000 

RESEARCH INTERESTS 

• Primary Fields: Applied Econometrics, Development Economics, Applied Macroeconomics 

• Secondary Fields: Financial Economics, Forecasting, Labor Economics, International Economics 

COMPLETED WORKING PAPERS 

[1] “A Semiparametric Analysis of Income Inequality in China”, submitted, September 2004. 

[2] “Economic Development and Air Pollution: A Nonparametric Approach”, August 2004. 

[3] “Kuznets Hypothesis Reexamined”, submitted, October 2004. 

WORK IN PROGRESS 

[1] “Coincident and Leading Indicators of the Chinese Stock Market” 

[2] “Financial Development and Economic Growth” 

[3] “An Investigation of the Efficiency of the Chinese Stock Market” 

CONFERENCES 

• Economic Representations, University of California Humanities Research Institute and Center for 

Ideas and Society, University of California, Riverside, April 2004. 

• Annual James Young Colloquium, University of California, Riverside, February 2003 

• Econometrics, Political and Development Seminar, University of California, Riverside, 2003 

• 5th Annual NBER-CCER Conference---China’s Reform in A Global Perspective, China Center 

for Economic Research, Beijing University, Beijing, June 2002 

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TEACHING EXPERIENCE 

Instructor 

Department of Economics, University of California, Riverside, Summer 2002/2003 

Macroeconomic Theory 

Teaching Assistant 

Department of Economics, University of California, Riverside, Fall 2001-Present 

Introduction to Microeconomics, Introduction to Macroeconomics, Intermediate Macroeconomics, 

Intermediate Microeconomics, Research and Business Methods, International Trade, Money and 

Banking 

BUSINESS EXPERIENCE 

Research Intern, Deputy General Economist Assistant 

China International Industrial and Commerce Co., Ltd., Beijing, China, Summer 2002 

Research Intern, Deputy Director Assistant 

Imports and Exports Division, People’s Republic of China Economic and Trade Commission, Beijing, 

China, Summer 1999 

AWARDS 

• Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship, University of California at Riverside, 2000-2004 

• Excellent Student Leadership of Beijing, Education Commission of Beijing, Beijing, 2000 

• Philippine National Bank Scholarship, Beijing Foreign Studies University, 1999 

• Elizabeth Crookes Scholarship, Beijing Foreign Studies University, 1998 

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS 

American Economic Association, Econometric Society, American Finance Association 

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REFERENCES 


Professor Aman Ullah 




(951) 827-1591 

ullah@mail.ucr.edu 

Professor Keith Griffin 




(951) 827-4108 

griffin@mail.ucr.edu 

Professor Azizur Rahman Khan 




(951) 827-1581 

khan@mail.ucr.edu 

Professor Tae-Hwy Lee 




(909) 827-1509 

taelee@mail.ucr.edu 

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RESEARCH SUMMARY 


[1] “A Semiparametric Analysis of Income Inequality in China” (Job Market Paper) 

This paper presents a semiparametric analysis of changes in the distribution of Chinese household income 

over the period from 1988 to 1995. This analysis adopts the density re-weighting procedure to study how 

economic policy reforms and changes in social and demographic factors affect the overall income 

inequality. It distinguishes itself from previous literature in two ways. First, it is the first paper that 

focuses on the entire distribution of household income, rather than Gini coefficient or some other 

summary measures, to study the changes in income inequality in urban China. This approach provides a 

visually clear representation of the shape of the income distribution and where in the distribution that 

various factors have the greatest impact. The effects of each of factors on changes in various summary 

measures of inequality are also computed to compare our results with those in other research. Second, two 

important theoretical issues of the counterfactual density estimation methodology are rigorously 

examined—how to choose the optimal bandwidth and how to test the difference between counterfactual 

and actual densities. The results find that changes in household structure, particularly the declining 

proportion of large families, housing welfare, ownership of economic structure, socio-demographic 

attributes and economic returns to these attributes contributed to the increase in inequality. These factors 

together account for about 70 percent of the observed increase in inequality. The results demonstrate that 

secular social and demographic trends are as important as economic policy reforms in explaining changes 

in the Chinese distribution of household incomes over the period. 

[2] “Economic Development and Air Pollution: A Nonparametric Approach” 

This paper examines the empirical interplay between economic growth and CO 2 emissions using 

nonparametric methods and panel data. The results demonstrate that relationship between CO 2 and GNP 

per capita around the world displays a monotonous upward sloping shape rather than the well-known 

inverted-U shape curve which is predicted by the Environmental Kuznets Hypothesis and supported by ad 

hoc parametric specification in previous empirical research. Based on this result, I argue that existing 

empirical evidence on Environmental Kuznets Hypothesis is highly sensitive to functional form 

assumptions and thus might be spurious due to the functional misspecification problem. The 

consequent policy implication is that both developed countries and developing countries should 

actively make efforts to reduce CO 2 emissions. 

[3] “Kuznets Hypothesis Reexamined” 

This paper presents a brief review of the recent literature around the Kuznets hypothesis and propose an 

explanation for the conflicting empirical results as well as theoretical debates from a methodological 

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perspective. Specifically, I apply the Kuhnian framework to analyzing some major reasons and features of 

changes in the literature. It shows that the components of Kuhn’s analysis closely fit the transition in the 

inequality-income literature. This application allows us to make sense of the debate and thus to discover 

those things unacknowledged under the surface which are what the real arguments are about. 

[4] ““Risk, Return and Efficiency of the Chinese Stock Market” 

This paper studies the dynamic behavior of risks and returns in Chinese stock markets. I characterize the 

time-series properties of stock-market return and volatility and test the market efficiency hypothesis. I 

establish and estimate an empirical model that captures the effect of local and global information 

variables on the conditional mean of stock-market returns and characterize the second order conditional 

moments using three error generation processes. I find that stock-market volatility is time-varying, mildly 

persistent, and is best described by a fat-tailed distribution such as the Stable distribution. 

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Wei Sun - Economics - University of California, Riverside

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