About

Welcome to my website!

I am Kangkai Wang (王慷楷), a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University and I expect to graduate in June 2025.

My research interests lie in leveraging large-scale datasets and combining design-based (reduced-form) and model-based (structural) approaches to explore topics in urban economics, environmental economics, and empirical industrial organization.

I will join the HKU Business School at The University of Hong Kong as a postdoctoral fellow working with Professor Guojun He in Fall 2025.

Here is my CV.

News

• [Jun. 2025] I will participate in the CUHK Summer School of Asia in the Global Economy 2025, themed Trade and Environment.
• [Jun. 2025] I will be presenting at The 3rd Summer Meeting in Urban Economics, China.
• [May 2025] I will deliver a mini lecture on my research in urban and environmental economics at the School of International Trade and Economics@UIBE.
  [May 2025] I will attend The 11th Biennial International Conference on Transition and Economic Development at Fudan University, where our paper will be presented.
  [Mar. 2025] I will be presenting at The 14th European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association.
  [Mar. 2025] The RA project I worked on, " The Geographic Flow of Bank Funding and Access to Credit: Branch Networks, Synergies, and Local Competition " (by Victor Aguirregabiria, Robert Clark, and Hui Wang) has been accepted by the American Economic Review!
  [Jan. 2025] Our paper has been accepted for the " Climate Change Impact, Adaptation, and Resilience in the Developing World " session at ASSA 2025.

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Working Papers

• Microclimate Risks and Urban Businesses (with Jianwei Xing, Hua Zhang, Shuang Zhang, and Eric Zou)
  Presentations: Chicago, ASSA 2025, 14th Toulouse Conference on the Economics of Energy and Climate, Michigan Ross, Frontiers in ESG Research Workshop@HKU, LSE, PKU, FISF@FDU, UoBath, CEIBS
• Why Are Commutes So Short in China? The Role of Travel Aversion and Location Adaptability (with Yizhen Gu, Zhi Wang, and Qinghua Zhang)
  Presentations: SMUE 2025@PHBS(scheduled), UIBE, The 11th Biennial International Conference on Transition and Economic Development, GSM Urban Economics Workshop@PKU, 14th European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association, PHBS Urban Economics Workshop
• Gradual Optimization Against Heterogeneous Moral Hazard: Evidence from a Fintech Lending Firm (with Chengzheng Li, and Xiang Ma)
  Presentations: THU, ASSA 2024, The 2023 Microeconomics Workshop@XMU, The 2022 China Economics Summer Institute, CASS, PKU, SWUFE

Work in Progress

• Beyond Boundaries: A Welfare Evaluation of Beijing's Greenbelt Policy
• Market Integration and Product Variety: Evidence from China's Tobacco Tax Reform (with Shengmao Cao, Qi Wu, and Jianwei Xing)
  Presentations: SUFE-Jinan Empirical IO Conference 2023@SUFE, The 7th CCER Summer Institute@PKU, GSM@PKU, SME@CUHKSZ, NSD@PKU

Teaching Assistant

• Causal Inference for Microeconometrics (UG, Fall 2024 & Fall 2023)
• Industrial Organization (UG, Spring 2022 & Spring 2021)
• Urban Economics (Ph.D., Fall 2024 & Fall 2021)
• Advanced Microeconomics I (Ph.D., Fall 2022 & Fall 2021)