Chang-Tai Hsieh

About

Chang-Tai Hsieh is the Phyllis and Irwin Winkelried Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He conducts research on growth and development, with a focus on understanding the factors that influence economic progress. Hsieh has published several papers in top economic journals, including Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, and the Journal of Political Economy, among others. His work explores topics such as innovation, talent allocation, industrial organization, and the impact of market structures on productivity and growth. Hsieh is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and Academia Sinica. He has received notable awards including an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship and the Sun Ye-Fang award from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Research topics

• Economics
• Political Science
• Business
• Labour economics
• Market economy
• Law
• Economic system
• Political economy
• Public economics

Selected publications

• Special Deals with Chinese Characteristics

  NBER Macroeconomics Annual · 2020 · 125 citations

  Chinese local governments wield their enormous political power and administrative capacity to provide “special deals” for favored private firms. We argue that China’s extraordinary economic growth comes from these special deals. Local political leaders do so because they derive personal benefits, either political or monetary, from providing special deals. Competition between local governments limits the predatory effects of special deals.

  DOI

• The Industrial Revolution in Services

  Journal of Political Economy Macroeconomics · 2022-10-20 · 76 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  US firms in service industries increasingly operate in more local markets. Employment, sales, and spending on fixed costs have increased rapidly in these industries. These changes have favored top firms, leading to increasing national concentration. Top firms in service industries have grown by expanding into new local markets, predominantly small and mid-sized US cities. Market concentration at the local level has decreased in all US cities, particularly in cities that were initially small. The…

  PublisherDOI

• The Cost of Privacy: Welfare Effects of the Disclosure of COVID-19 Cases

  The Review of Economics and Statistics · 2021-08-12 · 37 citations

  article

  Abstract South Korea publicly disclosed detailed location information of individuals who tested positive for COVID-19. We quantify the effect of public disclosure on the transmission of the virus and economic losses in Seoul. The change in commuting patterns due to public disclosure lowers the number of cases by 60,000 and the number of deaths by 2,000 in Seoul over two years. Compared to a city-wide lockdown that results in the same number of cases over two years as the disclosure scenario, the…

  PublisherDOI

• Contract Labor and Firm Growth in India

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2021-08-01 · 36 citations

  reportOpen access

  India's Industrial Disputes Act (IDA) of 1947 requires firm with more than 100 workers to pay large costs if they shrink their employment. Since the early 2000s, large Indian manufacturing firms have increasingly relied on contract workers who are not subject to the IDA. By 2015, contract workers accounted for 38% of total employment at firms with more than 100 workers compared to 20% in 2000. Over the same time period, the thickness of University of California at Berkeleythe right tail of the f…

  PublisherDOI

• Contract Labor and Establishment Growth in India

  Econometrica · 2025-01-01 · 8 citations

  article

  India's Industrial Disputes Act (IDA) requires large manufacturing plants to pay substantial costs if they wish to shrink their workforce. Since the early 2000s, these large plants have dramatically increased their use of contract workers who are not subject to these regulatory constraints. Between 2000 and 2015, the contract labor share in non‐managerial employment nearly doubled at establishments with more than 100 workers (from 21 to 40 percentage points), while it only increased from 14 to 1…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Zheng Song

  56 shared

• Peter J. Klenow

  47 shared

• Nicholas Li

  University of Arizona

  41 shared

• Chong‐En Bai

  Tsinghua University

  36 shared

• Pierre‐Olivier Gourinchas

  35 shared

• Ralph Ossa

  University of Zurich

  30 shared

• Gita Gopinath

  30 shared

• Enrico Moretti

  University of California, Berkeley

  29 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  University of California, Berkeley

  1998

• B.A., Economics

  Harvard University

  1993

Awards & honors

• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship
• Elected Member of Academia Sinica
• Sun Ye-Fang Prize (two-time recipient)
• Distinguished Alumni Award

Similar researchers at University of Chicago

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