About

I am a sixth-year Ph.D. student in Economics at Duke University.

My research interests are in macroeconomics, labor economics, economic applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and political economy.

My CV is available here. You can contact me at zhaosheng.li@duke.edu.

Job Market Paper

Working Papers

Learning from Coworkers and Gender Wage Gap

with Zihao Li

Gridded GDP and Capital Stock: Methodology for Spatially Disaggregated Economic Measure Consistent with Official Statistics

with Marco Marini, Alessandra Sozzi, Jim Tebrake, and Andinet Woldemichael

Union, Strike and Monopsony Power

Work in Progress

Machine Learning for High-Frequency Imputation

with Anthoney Swaminathan

Abstract

We use gradient-boosted trees to estimate U.S. county-quarter real GDP for 2013–2024 using BEA county-year real GDP data, QCEW county-quarter payroll, employment, and establishment counts, and spatial characteristics such as population and area. In held-out cells, the model produces an R2 of 0.990 and a WAPE of 5.31% when comparing annual-aggregated predicted county-quarter GDP to observed county-year values. The resulting panel has broad applicability to questions in the field of regional economics, with the potential to improve statistical power in empirical and calibration applications.

The Welfare Costs of Inequality Aversion: Theory and Evidence from Brazil

with Yuhan Zheng

Publications and Conditionally Accepted Papers