Yuxuan Zhang is a first-year Master of Public Policy student at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. Her research interests lie in the political economy of environmental policy — how political institutions and incentives shape regulatory enforcement and environmental outcomes.
As a Bartlett Fellow, she works with Professor Shaoda Wang on systematically quantifying the economic costs of China’s “war on pollution” since 2013, leveraging administrative data on firm-level abatement and production decisions. Prior to Harris, she earned an LL.B. from Tsinghua University and worked at NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics as a research assistant.