Research

Research Papers

Restricting Video Games in China: Effects on Time Use, Educational Achievement, and Health

Job Market Paper — Resubmission invited to the Journal of Development Economics

In August 2021, China implemented a nationwide restriction banning weekday gaming for minors and limiting weekend play to one hour. Using nationally representative survey data and a difference-in-differences design, I find that the policy substantially reduced minors’ Internet and gaming time but did not improve academic performance, study effort, or health. Effects were stronger for girls and students from smaller households, yet consistent across regions with different Internet coverage. Peer effects within boarding schools indicate that behavioral restrictions spread through social networks, amplifying compliance even among untreated older students. Self-reported well-being declined modestly, suggesting short-run mental health costs from lost digital leisure. Complementary evidence from a city-level regression-kink design confirms no test-score gains. Overall, the policy effectively curtailed online activity but yielded limited human-capital benefits, highlighting that digital regulations without supportive measures may reduce welfare without improving learning outcomes.

Digital Regulation and Market Responses: Evidence from Chinese Mobile Apps

This paper analyzes how the 2021 gaming restriction for minors in China reshaped digital markets using difference-in-differences and event-study analyses of app-level downloads and revenues. The regulation sharply reduced usage of youth-oriented games while leaving adult-oriented titles less affected and stimulating growth in substitute activities such as e-books and social media. Gaming activity fell on weekdays but concentrated during permitted weekend hours, revealing strategic adaptation by users and firms. Market reactions were highly heterogeneous: some developers rebranded products, adjusted monetization models, or shifted advertising toward adult audiences. The results demonstrate that stringent behavioral regulation can generate substantial spillovers across adjacent digital sectors, influencing platform competition and business incentives. Ongoing work extends this analysis by exploring longer-run firm dynamics, entry and exit patterns, and how digital restrictions interact with innovation and content creation in the broader app ecosystem.

Future Research

My future work extends these projects in several directions:

• Long-term impacts of digital restrictions on educational, psychological, and labor outcomes.
• Structural and industrial-organization modeling of firms’ strategic adaptation to digital regulation.
• Continued research on property rights, housing policy, and demographic change using administrative and census data.
• New project: the effects of China’s “monetized shantytown redevelopment” program on housing markets and fertility.