About Me

• Academic
  • Ph.D. Candidate in Economics
  • Primary Fields: International Trade, Political Economy, Econometrics
  • Secondary Fields: International Finance, Taiwan Studies, Environmental Economics
  • Before GW:
    • Syracuse University (M.A. Economics at Maxwell School, ’16)
    • Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica (Research Assistant, ’14)
    • R.O.C. Army (Army Officer, Second Lieutenant, ’13)
    • National Chengchi University (B.A + M.S. Honor Degree in International Trade, ’12)
  • Website: https://jeffjkuo.github.io ; Email: jeffkuo@gwu.edu
• Personal
  • From the City of Kaohsiung: Southern Pride!
  • Generation of Sunflower Movement…

Overview of My Current Work

• “Distance is the Soul of the Beauty”
  • Question 1: “Do open border policies help the political integration?”
  • Question 2: “Does the heterogeneous exposure to Chinese visitors realign the ideology?”
  • Question 3: “Does China-Taiwan case violate the”progressive integration theory?”
• Preview of results
  • Answer 1: No
  • Answer 2: Yes (Visited by more Chinese tourists, the districts vote more to DPP)
  • Answer 3: Yes
• Contributions
  • New dataset: Election Results + GIS
  • RD models: Different local polynomial
  • Counter-example of B. Belassa’s Integration Theory

Presidential Elections: Pre- v.s. Post- ECFA

• Pattern? Which regions switch their party the most?

Policy Shock

Inbound Visitors to Taiwan, 2001-2020

• ECFA
• Chinese Visitors to Taiwan

Empirics

• Data

  • Central Election Committee (CEC)
  • Geographical Information (Ministry of Interior)
  • Chinese Tourists (Tourism Bureau, Ministry of Transportation)

• Methodology: Sharp Regression Discontinuity Design

• Identification

• Algorithm

  1. Calculate the distance between the municipalities and the tourists attractions.
  2. Calculate the mean of distances, set the municipalities into control and treatment group.
  3. Set the mean of the distance as the cutoff to the close and away regions.
  4. Run the regression discontinuity using the 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020 presidential electoral data.
  5. Compare the treatment effects across the different
  6. Regression those treatment effects on the importing number of the Chinese tourists.

RD Graphs

End

• Future work
  • A modern trade theorectical model is needed
  • Explore the potential mechanism
• Thank YOU!
  • It’s really nice to see you (on zoom).
  • Please contact me anytime if you have question.
  • Look forward to have more academic interactions with you.