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Junsen Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Junsen Zhang.

2 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Intergenerational Mobility in China

In this chapter, we provide a synthesis of empirical work on the intergenerational mobility in China, examining how much a child's success depends on their parents' success. We start with an overview of data sources and measure of intergenerational mobility in China's context, followed by discussion on the empirical findings in five categories of intergenerational mobility: income, education, social class, wealth, and health. Major channels of transmission of socioeconomic status across generations are investigated, including human and social capital, fertility and migration decision, housing price and trade liberalization in the market transition, and belief. Finally, we provide policy implications to promote upward mobility for children born to less advantaged parents in China's context.

econ.GN↗
arXiv2026

Marginal treatment effects in the absence of instrumental variables

We propose a method for defining, identifying, and estimating the marginal treatment effect (MTE) without imposing the instrumental variable (IV) assumptions of independence, exclusion, and separability (or monotonicity). Under a new definition of the MTE based on reduced-form treatment error that is statistically independent of the covariates, we find that the relationship between the MTE and standard treatment parameters holds in the absence of IVs. We provide a set of sufficient conditions ensuring the identification of the defined MTE in an environment of essential heterogeneity. The key conditions include a linear restriction on potential outcome regression functions, a nonlinear restriction on the propensity score, and a conditional mean independence restriction that will lead to additive separability. We prove this identification using the notion of semiparametric identification based on functional form. And we provide an empirical application for the Head Start program to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed method in analyzing heterogenous causal effects when IVs are elusive.

econ.EM↗