AREUEA 2025 Junior Scholar Program Participant Information

Weizhao Sun

Bio

I will join Grand Valley State University as an Assistant Professor of Economics in August 2025, after receiving my Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Colorado Boulder. My research focuses on regional and international economics with interests on trade cost, infrastructure, geography and supply chain.

Summary of Project(s)

Optimal Infrastructure Investments Under a Two-tier Government Structure in the Global Economy: This paper develops a quantitative spatial equilibrium model to study endogenous infrastructure under a two-tier government structure where a benevolent national government, followed by self-interested provincial governments, optimally solves the planners' problems by allocating highways and tunnels to maximize aggregated welfare within their jurisdictions. I estimate the trade-cost mitigating effect of highways and tunnels by introducing two novel instrumental variables and incorporating bilateral elevation. The model is calibrated to 309 prefectures across 23 Chinese provinces. Results show that, compared to complete centralization, a two-tier approach promotes equality, lowering inequality measures at the expense of lowering expected utility. In contrast, complete decentralization leads to a substantial decrease in expected utility and a significant increase in inequality.

Weizhao Sun's Personal Website