About

Dean Yang is a professor of public policy and economics at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, and also holds positions as a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at LSA and as a Research Professor at the Population Studies Center. His research focuses on the economic problems of developing countries, with current areas of interest including international migration, health, culture, and political economy. Yang teaches courses on the economics of developing countries and development economics at the Ford School. He received both his undergraduate and PhD degrees in economics from Harvard University. His work involves analyzing issues such as international development, migration, health decision-making, and economic growth in developing nations, contributing to the understanding of how policies and economic behaviors impact development outcomes.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Natural resource economics
• Economics
• Agricultural economics
• Public economics
• Economic growth
• Market economy
• Business
• Geography

Selected publications

• International Migration and Economic Development

  Annual Review of Economics · 2026-04-16

  article1st authorCorresponding

  International labor migration from developing to developed countries generates income gains for migrants that dwarf those from any known development intervention, with workers routinely experiencing 4–5-fold wage increases upon migration. These individual gains translate into massive remittance flows to developing countries that far exceed foreign aid flows. This review synthesizes the rapidly growing literature on migration's impacts on origin countries, emphasizing studies with credible causal identification. The evidence progresses from individual and household effects, where migrants and their families experience substantial gains in income, education investments, and consumption smoothing, to broader impacts on the origin area, including regional economic development and widespread human capital formation. Contrary to concerns about so-called brain drain, recent research reveals brain gain effects whereby migration opportunities increase educational investments and skill formation. Migration also has additional positive effects through trade and investment linkages, knowledge transfers, and changing social norms. This review also discusses policies for enhancing migration's development impacts and key areas for future research.

  PublisherDOI

• Editorial to special issue on migration and development

  Journal of Development Economics · 2025-07-23

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Long Shadow of Early Education: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in the Philippines

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-03-01

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  How does early educational quality affect longer-term academic outcomes?We shed light on this question via a natural experiment in the Philippines-the implementation of a mother tongue education policy in public schools in kindergarten to Grade 3.This policy led to an unexpected decline in educational quality, but differentially in a subset of schools strongly predicted by prepolicy student language composition.We use language composition variables as instrumental variables for treatment.Leveraging panel data and confirming robustness to pre-trends, we find that the policy led to declines in standardized test scores in public primary schools.Employing a triple-difference strategy with Philippine Census data (across cohorts, localities, and decadal censuses), we show that by 2020, cohorts fully exposed to the policy completed 0.3 fewer years of schooling.By revealing how a policy-induced reduction in early education quality reduces educational attainment in later years, our results underscore the importance of investing in the quality of education in the first years of schooling.

  PublisherDOI

• The Price of Faith: Economic Costs and Religious Adaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Using Digital Connectivity to Expand Global Job Opportunities for African Workers

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-11-13

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Using Digital Connectivity to Expand Global Job Opportunities for African Workers

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-11-13

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Picture This: Social Distance and the Mistreatment of Migrant Workers

  Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics · 2025-05-29

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Ancient Epics in the Television Age: Mass Media, Identity, and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism in India

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Ancient Epics in the Television Age: Religious Identity and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism in India

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-01-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This study examines the long-term social and political impacts of mass media exposure to religious content in India.We study the impact of "Ramayan," the massively popular adaptation of the Hindu epic televised in 1987-88.To identify causal effects, we conduct difference-in-difference analyses and exploit variation in TV signal strength driven by location of TV transmitters and topographical features inhibiting electromagnetic TV signal propagation.We find that areas with higher exposure to Ramayan (higher TV signal strength when the show aired) experienced significant cultural and political changes.First, we document a strengthening of religious identity among Hindus: parents in these areas became more likely to give their newborn sons traditionally Hindu names, and households showed increased adherence to orthodox Hindu dietary practices.In the short term, this cultural shift led to an increase in Hindu-Muslim communal violence through 1992.Over the longer term, through 2000, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) became more likely to win state assembly elections.Analyses of changes in local TV signal strength in India over decades indicate that these effects are not due to general access to TV but are due to exposure to the Ramayan TV show in 1987-1988.Our findings reveal that media portrayal of religious narratives can have lasting effects on cultural identity, intergroup violence, and electoral outcomes.

  PublisherDOI

• Brain drain or brain gain? Effects of high-skilled international emigration on origin countries

  Science · 2025-05-22 · 21 citations

  reviewSenior author

  How does emigration of highly educated citizens of low-income countries to high-income countries affect the economies of the origin countries? The direct effect is "brain drain"-a decrease in the country's human capital stock. However, there may also be indirect "brain gain" effects. This review summarizes evidence that uses causal inference methods to reveal mechanisms that may lead to brain drain, gain, or circulation. Collectively, the weight of the evidence suggests that migration opportunities often increase human capital stock in origin countries and produce downstream beneficial effects through remittances; foreign direct investment and trade linkages; transfers of knowledge, technology and norms; and return migration. We discuss conditions under which benefits from skilled migration may outweigh costs and also describe potential research paths to inform policy.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David McKenzie

  114 shared

• Kate Ambler

  107 shared

• Diego Aycinena

  University of Pennsylvania

  101 shared

• Ganesh Seshan

  84 shared

• Xavier Giné

  76 shared

• Caroline Theoharides

  Amherst College

  70 shared

• Jessica Goldberg

  56 shared

• Dan Silverman

  Arizona State University

  51 shared