I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at the National School of Development, Peking University. My research as a development economist examines how people in low-income settings make decisions under poverty, and why development programs often fall short in practice. I combine field experiments, original data, and close engagement with real-world programs, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa.

My work studies health, service delivery, and household responses to shocks, and more recently the impacts of artificial intelligence on labor markets. Across contexts, I focus on how individual behavior and organizational design jointly shape development outcomes.

Contact: hangyu.economics [at] gmail.com · hyu [at] nsd.pku.edu.cn

Google Scholar · CV · VoxDev profile · Mozambique research · YouTube · CGHE at Michigan

Recent

• 2026-05 — Artificial Intelligence and the Alleviation of Labor Market Mismatch: Evidence from Online Job Matching Data published in China Economic Quarterly, 26(3): 874–894.
• 2026-05 — Presented work in progress Returns to Information in Hiring for Health Service Delivery at the Michigan Conference on Development Economics (MDev), University of Michigan.
• 2026-04 — New working paper: When Incentives Aren’t Enough: Evidence on Inattention and Imperfect Memory from HIV Medication Adherence (with Stolove, Yang, Riddell, Mahumane).

Upcoming

• Jun 18–19, 2026 — Catch me in Lisbon, where I’ll present When Incentives Aren’t Enough: Evidence on Inattention and Imperfect Memory from HIV Medication Adherence at the 2026 NOVAFRICA Conference on Economic Development (Nova SBE).
• Jul 3–4, 2026 — Catch me near Beijing, where I’ll present Livelihoods and Recovery After Cyclone Idai: Short- and Long-Run Household Evidence from Mozambique at the Global South Development Conference 2026 (ISSCAD, Peking University).