Zhexun Mo

We’re pleased to announce a $10 million gift from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation, which supports the work of @stone-lis.bsky.social www.gc.cuny.edu/news/10-mill... @cuny.edu

"[T]he rich man holds the Law in his purse." -- Rousseau, Letters Written from the Mountain (#9).

Thanks a lot Sehyun!!

2025 highlights:

✨ Inequality placed on the agenda of the 𝗚𝟮𝟬 𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁

✨2025 𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 published in October

✨2026 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗜𝗻𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 published in December

✨27 Working Papers authored by 78 researchers

...and more!

📖 Flip through our report heyzine.com/flip-book/22...

📢now forthcoming in ECMA!

The Class Gap in Career Progression: Evidence from US Academia

Class is rarely a focus of research or DEI in elite US occupations.

Evidence suggests it should be: we find a large class gap in at least one occupation - tenure-track academia...🧵

Now another R&R at one of my favorite journals (JEH) - 2026 is blessed 😀

To make the most of the World Inequality Database, consult the DINA Guidelines and other resources: wid.world/methodology/

This 3rd edition includes improved or new:
🔹macro aggregates
🔹income and wealth definitions
🔹data-quality flags
🔹sections on wealth distribution and gender inequality

The data underlying the paper and replication package are publicly available at the World Human Capital Expenditure Database: whce.world

Published version coming soon! Link to old WP: wid.world/document/hum....

We build a new global historical database on education and health expenditures since 1800 and study how unequal opportunities shape long-run productivity convergence.

Joint work with @nitin-k-bharti.bsky.social, Amory Gethin, @thomaspiketty.bsky.social, @markjenmana.bsky.social and Li Yang.

✨ Good news to start 2026! ✨ 🥳
Our paper “Human Capital, Unequal Opportunities and Productivity Convergence: A Global Historical Perspective, 1800–2100” has been accepted at the Journal of Public Economics.

I am so very sorry to hear about the passing about my friend and colleague Professor Kimuli Kasara. She was a brilliant scholar and a bright, funny, warm person. I remember first meeting her as the only other Black woman/faculty at the Columbia political econ seminar and feeling relief/happiness

🚨 We're hiring an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Economics

Only 5 days left to apply. See details 👇

Also, "contributed by" articles should probably be entirely done away with at PNAS.

This dirty little secret is that this provides a way for NAS members to get questionable work in at a high profile outlet with less stringent peer review.

It's corrupt and it's anti science.

Racial Inequality and Redistribution in Post-Apartheid South Africa - WID - World Inequality Database Racial Inequality and Redistribution in Post-Apartheid South Africa The source for global inequality data. Open access, high quality wealth and income inequality data developed by an international aca...

South Africa remains the most unequal country in the world, with the top 10% earning 70% of all pretax income.

New study by A. Gethin & L. Czajka shows that inequality in 2019 was as high as in 1993.

Racial inequality reduced only because top 10% Black incomes surged.

▶️ wid.world/news-article...

YouTube video by World Inequality Lab World Inequality Report 2026

Today, we are publishing our World Inequality Report, which reviews the most recent #inequalitydata and exposes the magnitude of #inequality across time, space and all its dimensions.

👇Share this thread, share the report!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=R67u...

This is a very cool paper with a clever identification strategy to test the causal impact of the opioid epidemic on various political outcomes.

A key point that’s not in the abstract —causal mechanism is voters agreed with GOP tough on crime rhetoric and policy.

Full paper link here: osf.io/preprints/so...

🎯 Conclusion:
Light-touch information corrects misperceptions but does not shift deeper identity-based or geopolitical attitudes toward Chinese FDI.
As Germany and the EU adjust their China strategies, public opinion—not just economic fundamentals—will shape the policy space ahead.

📌 Heterogeneity:
Quantile regressions on WTA measures show that fact-checking and positive narratives reduce the penalty only among respondents already at the favorable end.

Heavy baseline bias → no treatment response
Low baseline bias → clear treatment effect to information and narratives

📉 More on Willingness-To-Accept (WTA):
To consider a Chinese investor equivalent to an EU/US investor, respondents require more job preservation:

• EU/US investor baseline: 250 jobs saved
• Chinese investor: ~350 jobs saved

This implies a ~50% China-origin penalty built into public preferences.

However:
❌ deeper geopolitical or autonomy-related attitudes remain unchanged
❌ support for a Germany–China FDI agreement does not shift
❌ no detectable effects on either conjoint choices or WTA measures

In short, belief updating does not translate into substantive preference updating.

📣 Narratives:
🔵 Positive narrative → modest improvements in economic perceptions
🔴 Negative narrative → little effect on China-specific concerns, but notably increases favorable evaluations of US FDI, consistent with a substitution logic

📈 Fact-checking effects:
Providing accurate information significantly improves perceived economic benefits of FDI (across the board regardless of the country of origin) — by roughly 0.2–0.3 standard deviations

🧪 Experimental interventions:
We implemented three randomized treatments interventions w.r.t. Chinese FDI in Germany:
1️⃣ Fact-checking: true FDI shares
2️⃣ Negative narrative: economic/political risks, dependency, IP
3️⃣ Positive narrative: market access, diversification, competitiveness

🇨🇳➡️🇩🇪 Meanwhile in China:
Chinese respondents express overwhelmingly positive evaluations of German FDI, rating it highly on:

✔️ job creation
✔️ technological upgrading
✔️ national economic development

Roughly 80% provide strongly favorable assessments.
The asymmetry in mutual perceptions is striking.

🧩 Conjoint experiment:
Holding all attributes constant, changing the investor from EU → China reduces selection likelihood by:
➡️ −40 percentage points
Compared with the US:
➡️ −20 points

A substantial origin penalty, independent of project characteristics.

🟦 EU FDI
🟧 US FDI
🟥 Chinese FDI

Across every domain we measure —
💼 economic prospects
🏭 employment
🧪 innovation
🏛 political autonomy

a remarkably stable preference hierarchy emerges:

EU > US > China

This structure is consistent and highly robust.

📊 The perception gap:
On average, Germans believe that Chinese firms account for 33% of inward FDI.
The actual figure?
👉 ~1% — a roughly 30-fold overestimation. 😬

By contrast:
• EU FDI is systematically underestimated
• US FDI is perceived relatively accurately

🔥 Key finding:
German respondents substantially overestimate the scale of Chinese FDI in Germany and evaluate it far more negatively than FDI from the EU or the United States.
Attempts to correct these misperceptions produce only modest and fragile shifts in attitudes.