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Fan Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, specializing in Business & Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania (2015) and a B.A. in Economics and History from the University of Chicago (2008). Wang joined the University of Houston as an Assistant Professor in 2015 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022. His research focuses on development economics, financial development, and health economics, particularly financial access and human capital development in village economies of low- and middle-income countries. He investigates the impacts of formal credit market expansion on informal credit in Thai villages, village-based nutritional subsidies on child anthropometrics in Guatemala and the Philippines, and rural school consolidation on educational attainment in China. As an applied microeconomist, Wang analyzes unequal effects of government policies, environmental shocks, and technological changes on children, workers, and households using structural equilibrium models of financial, health, and labor market choices.
Wang's publications appear in premier journals, including the Journal of Econometrics (2024, with Puentes, Behrman, and Cunha, “You are What Your Parents Expect: Height and Local Reference Points”), Review of Economic Dynamics (2022, “An Empirical Equilibrium Model of Formal and Informal Credit Markets in Developing Countries”), World Development (2022, with Hannum, “Fewer, Better Pathways for All? Intersectional Impacts of Rural School Consolidation in China’s Minority Regions”), Economic Development and Cultural Change (2021, with Hannum and Liu, “Estimating the Effects of Educational System Consolidation: The Case of China’s Rural School Closure Initiative”), and Economics & Human Biology (2016, with Puentes et al., “Early Life Height and Weight Production Functions with Endogenous Energy and Protein Inputs”). A member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group at the University of Chicago since 2017, he has obtained major grants, including National Science Foundation PIRE (2023–2025, $1,485,510, co-PI, on climate risk and childhood inequalities) and Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation (2019–2022, $12,000, PI). Wang referees for journals such as the American Economic Review and Journal of Development Economics and has presented at Econometric Society meetings, Society of Labor Economists, and American Economic Association.