Yifei Wang
Economist
University of California, Santa Cruz | 2nd year Ph.D. Student
About Me
I am currently a Ph.D. candidate in Economics with a strong focus on applied microeconomics and education policy. My research primarily explores the causal impacts of educational policies, such as school attendance boundary rezoning and targeted interventions like Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) programs, on student outcomes, resource allocation, and housing markets.
Leveraging advanced econometric methods and machine learning techniques, my work aims to contribute to the development of more effective, equitable, and evidence-based policies. With a multidisciplinary background, I have published papers on dynamic optimization algorithms, credit scoring models, and speech recognition. I actively engage in collaborative projects and value the opportunity to contribute to meaningful societal impact through rigorous analysis and innovation.
Personal Interest
In my free time, I enjoy hiking and exploring national parks, finding inspiration in nature’s balance and systems. I am also an avid reader of science fiction, which fuels my imagination and innovative thinking. Additionally, I am passionate about photography, capturing everyday moments that tell stories of resilience and community. To relax, I experiment with cooking recipes from different cultures, believing food connects us across diverse backgrounds.
Professional Goal
My career goal is to become a professor in economics, where I can combine my passion for research and teaching. I aspire to contribute to the field of education economics by conducting innovative, data-driven research that informs policies promoting educational equity and social mobility. As a professor, I aim to mentor and inspire the next generation of economists, fostering their intellectual growth while building a collaborative academic community. Through both research and teaching, I hope to make a lasting impact on the academic and policy-making landscape.
Technical Skills
Data Science
Programming Language
Research
Publications
PeerJ Computer Science
This paper designs a heterogeneous ensemble model by weighting the factorization machine (FM) and deep neural networks (DNN), which can efficiently extract low-order intersections and high-order intersections.
Plos one
The network model with the best results and the classifier were selected for combination. An accuracy of 93.39% was achieved on the pig speech classification task, while the AUC also reached 0.99163, demonstrating the superiority of the method. This study contributes to the direction of computer vision and acoustics by recognizing the sound of pigs.
Working Papers
- Evaluated the causal impact of boundary adjustments on student academic performance and housing prices.
- Utilized GIS and machine learning to analyze school attendance boundary changes.
- This study aims to provide actionable insights for policymakers on how to adjust the school attendance boundary.
- Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) policies target underperforming schools identified under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
- The research evaluates CSI's effectiveness in reducing achievement gaps and improving resource equity using school-level data and advanced econometric methods.
- This study aims to provide actionable insights for policymakers to optimize intervention strategies, ensuring long-term educational improvements and equity.
Teaching Experience
@ University of California, Santa CruzECON 124: Machine Learning for Economists
Teaching Assistant - Michael Pak-shing Leung
2025.01-Current
ECON 1: Introductory Microeconomics
Teaching Assistant - Subhra Baran Saha
2024.09-2024.12
Student Evaluation Highlights:
"She helped me encourage that I could succeed in the course by trying to put the answer and concept into simpler terms."
"My TA was very kind and friendly which was encouraging"
"She would often have a whiteboard on her screen share showing us on how she would do the work and sometimes show other examples from classes she took herself."
"I appreciated when we went over problems step by step"
ECON 1: Introductory Microeconomics
Teaching Assistant - Kwok-Chiu Fung
2024.04-2024.06
Student Evaluation Highlights:
"She often giving all his student insightful teaching materiale letting me catch on the class and prepared for the exam"
"Going over questions and really explaining them helped to fully understand a concept."
ECON 1: Introductory Microeconomics
Teaching Assistant - Kwok-Chiu Fung
2024.01-2024.03
Student Evaluation Highlights:
"The TA's responsiveness over email with issues I was having with the coursework was extremely helpful."
"The TA had people answer questions that she asked which was helpful in getting students to interact. She drew on the board which made it helpful to visualize the concepts."
Education
Southwestern University of Finance and Economics
2016.09-2020.07
B.A. in Economics
University of Calgary
2021.09-2022.09
M.A. in Economics
City University of Hong Kong
2023.01-2023.07
Research Assistant
University of California, Santa Cruz
2023.09-2024.06
M.A. in Economics
University of California, Santa Cruz
2023.09-Current
Ph.D. student in Economics
Gallery
with Claudia Goldin
2024.12
Claudia Goldin, Nobel Prize-winning economist, is renowned for her work on gender economics and labor markets.
with John Friedman (center) and Mengying Peng (left).
2024.12
John Friedman is an economist and professor at Brown University, known for his research on social mobility, education, and public policy. Mengying is an educational economist at Hitotsubashi University
with Jacob L. Vigdor
2024.12
Jacob L. Vigdor is an economist and professor at the University of Washington, known for his research on immigration, education policy, and housing economics.
with Annemarie Schweinert
2024.12
Annemarie Schweinert is a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, focusing on topics related to economics and public policy.
with Xuechao(Jane) Qian
2024.12
Jane is a Postdoctoral Scholar at UC Irvine and a former Lazear-Liang Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford GSB (2022-2024), specializing in labor and health economics with a focus on diversity, innovation, and human capital formation.