I'm an environmental economist and an assistant professor at the Department of Economics, National University of Singapore. I received my Ph.D. from the Sustainable Development program at Columbia University in 2023.
Email: xd2197@columbia.edu xdu@nus.edu.sg
Environmental Impacts of China's Overseas Development Projects (with Douglas Almond)
Coca's Return and the American Overdose Fallout (with Ben Hansen, Shan Zhang, and Eric Zou)
Solar Expansion Following Coal Phase-outs (with Ruozi Song)
Requiem for Rivers? Global Dams, Environmental Impacts, and Agricultural Adaptation (with Shan Zhang)
Airlines, Pollution, and Fertility (with Charles A Taylor)
Trade, Trees, and Lives (with Lei Li and Eric Zou)
NBER WP #33143, SSRN November 2024 version
Marine Microplastics and Infant Health (with Shan Zhang and Eric Zou)
NBER WP #33094, SSRN October 2024 version
Reject and Resubmit, Review of Economics and Statistics
Household Penalty (with Krzysztof Zaremba)
R&R, Economic Development and Cultural Change
Columbia CEEP WP #26, May 2022 version, August 2020 version
R&R, Economic Journal
Adulterated Spice: Lead Poisoning, Conflicts, and Fertility (with Shan Zhang)
Revision resubmitted, Journal of Public Economics
Effects of Lead Exposure Across Generations (with Krzysztof Zaremba)
Revision resubmitted, Journal of Public Economics
Columbia CEEP WP #24, CESifo WP #10296
Conditionally accepted, Economic Journal
Weather and U.S. Railways: Risk, Adaptation, and Congestion, with Andrew J Wilson, Journal of Public Economics, Accepted
Green Regulation, Trade Friendliness, and Local Policy Adaptation, with Yu Qin and Yu Xie, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2026.
Rapid Increases in Methane Concentrations Following August 2020 Suspension of the US Methane Rule, with Muye Ru and Douglas Almond, NBER Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy, 2025.
Competing with Clean Air: Pollution Disclosure and College Desirability, Ecological Economics, 2023.
Favourability towards Natural Gas Relates to Funding Source of University Energy Centres, with Douglas Almond and Anna Papp, Nature Climate Change, 2022.
Reduced Trolling on Russian Holidays and Daily US Presidential Election Odds, with Douglas Almond and Alana Vogel, PLOS ONE, 2022.
Ambiguous Air Pollution Effects of China's COVID-19 Lock-Down, with Douglas Almond, Valerie Karplus, and Shuang Zhang, AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2021.
Later Bedtimes Predict President Trump’s Performance, with Douglas Almond, Economics Letters, 2020.
Lessons Learned from China's Regional Carbon Market Pilots, with Junjie Zhang and Zhenxuan Wang, Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, 2017.
Schedule an appointment: https://calendly.com/xd2197/office-hours
EC4305 Applied Econometrics: Syllabus
Exposure to microplastics lowers birthweights and damages infant health, VoxDev (January 2025)
Podcast on social media and violence, with Jennifer Doleac, Probable Causation (December 2023)
Biden has a profound choice to make on LNG expansion, by Bill McKibben, The New Yorker (October 2023)
Fossil fuel companies donated $700m to US universities over 10 years, by Amy Westervelt, The Guardian (March 2023)
How oil & gas funding distorts energy research, Yahoo News (November 2022)
Trump’s sleepless nights, trustworthy faces, and importing hate, Boston Globe (October 2020)
``Economics is the study of the optimal allocation of scarce resources. Today, few are scarcer than climate stability and a survivable environment.''