Lin Lang

I am a PhD student in Economics at The University of Manchester, fully funded by the ESRC North West Doctoral Training Centre Studentship and President's Doctoral Scholar Award. I graduated from Nankai University, China in 2010 with BA in Economics. I then studied at The University of Manchester and obtained  Msc in Finance and Business Economics in 2011 and Msc in Economics with distinction in 2015.

• Government Spending and Fiscal Policy
• Growth and Development
• structural change and some applications

Main Supervisor: Dr Xiaobing Wang

Co-Supervisor: Dr Raffaele Rossi

PGR Advisor: Dr Michele Berardi

Government Debt and Fiscal Reform in the UK Job market paper, click here

Abstract: This research is motivated by the fact that UK government debt relative to output has increased dramatically in the last decade. In addition, an aging population in recent years presents many challenges to government expenditures, and consequently, the UK is projected to experience further upward pressures on government debt. This paper uses a Neoclassical Growth Model to explore the amount of additional tax revenues needed to finance future government expenditures and at the same time reduce the debt to output ratio to 60%. We find that the required revenue to achieve the fiscal stability is in the range of 20-24% of consumption expenditures. Also, when a distorting tax (consumption tax or labor income tax) is used to achieve the goal, such tax rate needs to increase to a very high level, even though the government is allowed to broaden its tax base.

Public Debt, Chinese Loans and Optimal exploration-extraction in Africa (with King Yoong Lim and Chuku Chuku) African Development Bank Working Paper, click here

Abstract: Based on an optimal oil exploration-extraction model with public debts and Chinese loans, we examine analytically and empirically two theoretical propositions pertaining to the impacts of public debt and Chinese loan on economic and physical scarcity/abundance in Africa economies. First, despite a baseline independent relationship between public debt level and optimal operations, the level of public debts in an economy can have an adverse effect on the abundance measures if it breached the debt-sustainability threshold. Second, with alternative Chinese loans, the effect on optimal exploration-extraction is analytically ambiguous. To examine both propositions, we estimate endogenous binary-treatment regression models based on a panel data of 18 African economies over 2000-17. We find empirical support with regards to the adverse effect of public debt sustainability. Further, we find positive effect from Chinese loans to both abundance measures, indicating that the combined marginal benefits outweigh the marginal costs associated with the resource-collateralized funding nature of these loans.

The Effectiveness of Public Investment: The Role of Public Debt Sustainability Ph.D. chapter

Abstract: This paper aims to identify the public investment shock for a sample of 14 OECD countries from 1985 to 2018 and investigate how public debt sustainability affects the macroeconomic effect of a public investment shock. This study identifies public investment shock as forecast errors of public investment and uses the local projection method to estimate the responses of a set of key macroeconomic variables to public investment shocks. The empirical result shows that public debt sustainability affects the effectiveness of the public investment: The responses of output is statistically significant larger in a weak-debt regime (i.e., the debt-to-GDP ratio is greater than a specific high level) than in a strong-debt regime (i.e., the debt ratio is less than a specific low level). To investigate the channels through which the public debt sustainability can affect the effect of public investment shocks, I also consider the responses of other macroeconomic variables and find that the public debt sustainability can limit the effect of public investment shocks through the private consumption and costs of borrowing.

Work in progress

Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Financing and Crime: A Game- Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of The Locational Effects of Crime Incidence on Project Underpayments (with King Yoong Lim, Diego Morris, and Waseem Toraubally)

Macroeconomics of Belt-Road-Initiative: Relative Energy Intensity and China's Rise as Emerging Lender (with King Yoong Lim and Chunping Liu)

Teaching Associate, University of Manchester (Feb 2021- Jun 2021)

• Deliver online tutorials on undergraduate modules and mark assessed work in the department of Economics, across the full range of undergraduate courses offered. Engaged in teaching-related administrative work as well as the peer review of the teaching of Graduate Teaching Assistants. Deliver a small number of lectures on a course unit on a specific area of expertise.

• Courses: Advanced Statistics, Microeconomic Analysis II, Introduction to Mathematical Economics

Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Manchester (2020-2021)

• Assist in teaching undergraduate Economics courses and mark the assessment. Provide formative feedback to students.

• Courses: Macroeconomic Analysis I