Dehua Li
Welcome! I am a PhD candidate in Economics at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow.
I am lucky to be advised by Alex Trew and Tuuli Vanhapelto.
My research interests lie in macro-development,
quantitative spatial economics, and economic history.
I was a visiting PhD student at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) in Fall 2025, and I am very grateful to my host, Dávid Nagy.
My CV is available here.
Email: dehua.li@glasgow.ac.uk
Research
Job Market Paper
“Paper Title”
Coming soon!
Presentations: CREi International Lunch Workshop (UPF, Barcelona); UEA Summer School 2026 (LSE, London); 8th QMUL Economics and Finance Workshop for PhD & Post-doctoral Students
Working Papers
Gender Skill Gaps and Gender Inequality Along the Wage Distribution
Revise and Resubmit, Labour Economics
Gender differences in labor market outcomes tend to be especially pronounced among top earners. Using the international PIAAC dataset, this paper shows that such ‘glass ceilings’ can also be observed for numeracy skills, i.e. competencies with large labor market returns. Women at the top of the wage distribution have both lower numeracy scores and lower returns to higher levels of numeracy compared to men, suggesting that numeracy skills may play an important role in our understanding of well-known gender gaps in labor market outcomes. These numeracy-wage patterns are especially pronounced for parents and for those with their highest degree in a non-STEM field of study, which speaks in favor of the importance of these life decisions for skill evolution. Our paper argues that – despite the increasing educational equality – there exist inequalities in skills among adult men and women, and these may impede the convergence of the gender wage gap.
Good Money in Bad Times: Indirect Issuance of Banknotes in China, 1905–1936
China pioneered paper money in the thirteenth century, yet by the early twentieth century it still lacked a unified national banknote. From 1905 to 1936, the money supply expanded fivefold despite war, political fragmentation, and the absence of an effective central bank. We highlight a neglected mechanism: indirect banknote issuance (lingquan), whereby non issuing banks deposited reserves with authorized issuers to obtain notes for local circulation. Using newly digitized banking yearbooks and archival evidence, we show that lingquan accounted for 12–40% of annual issuance and functioned through a division of labor between major issuing banks and locally embedded native banks.
Work in Progress
Work in Progress Title