PhD Student, Economics
he/him/his
Yicheng Chen (he/him) is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics, specializing in public economics, political economy, and economic history. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Peking University and an M.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago.
In Spring 2026, Yicheng was awarded a summer mini-grant which will support undergraduate research support for his project which constructs a comprehensive nationwide database of municipal ballot measures from 1990 to 2025 to evaluate the causal effects of local public spending on housing prices and spatial sorting. By employing a dynamic Regression Discontinuity design, the research investigates the distributional welfare impacts of local public goods provision across different socioeconomic groups.