Ying Zheng

Assistant Professor of Economics at the Renmin University of China.

Primary: Empirical IO, Applied Microeconomics.

Secondary: Econometrics, Corporate Finance, Energy Economics, Environmental Economics

Publications

  • “Price ceilings as focal points to reach price uniformity: Evidence from the Chinese gasoline market,” Energy Economics. 92, 1-11, 2020. [with Xiaobing Zhang, Yinxin Fei and Lei Zhang.] DOI.

  • “The Dynamic Complementarity of Renewable Energy Sources: A Bayesian Vector Autoregressive Approach,” International Journal of Green Energy. 1–13, 2022. [with Jinliang Che, Zidong An and Feng Song.] DOI.

  • “Accounting and Decomposition of China’s Co2 Emissions 1981–2020,” Applied Energy. 124104, 2024. [with Jianhong Ma, Ning Wang, Zihao Chen, Libo Wang, Qiyang Xiong, Peilin Chen, Hongxia Zhang and Zhan-Ming Chen.] DOI.

  • “Asymmetric Pass-through of Crude Oil Prices to Gasoline Prices: Evidence from Chinese Gasoline Pricing Reform,” International Journal of Global Environmental Issues. 47, 350–69. 2025. [with Xiaobing Zhang and Mengyang Liu.] DOI.

  • “Tax incentives for new energy vehicles challenge road infrastructure break-even,” Energy Economics. 146, 108521. 2025. [with Yiya Lu, Tianduo Peng, Lining Wang, Xunmin Ou, Xunzhang Pan and Zhan-Ming Chen.] DOI.

  • “Plugging In for Cities: The Impact of Power Infrastructure on Urban Agglomeration,” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. [with Jialu Wu, Xiaohua Xia, Lianzhou Tang, Baifan Chen.] (Accepted)

Books

《面向新型电力系统的储能与电力市场》，贺徙、耿学文、裴善鹏、刘坚、郑𬎆著，机械工业出版社，2024年。

内容简介 作为2024年国家出版基金项目和“十四五”时期国家重点出版物出版专项规划项目，本书系统总结了我国新型储能产业的发展现状，深入剖析了其参与电力市场的现状与瓶颈。书中详细借鉴了美国、德国、英国、澳大利亚、日本、韩国等发达国家在新型储能电力市场参与方面的先进政策经验，构建了多种储能类型在国外市场成功应用的基础模型，并结合市场响应进行了相关经济学理论分析。全书立足于学术与产业融合，贯穿了完善我国新型储能政策体系、加快市场机制建设以及推动产业链关键环节合理响应的启示和建议，具有重要的理论指导和实践参考价值。该书不仅适合能源政策、电力市场、新能源、能源经济、储能科学与工程、电力系统、电气工程等相关专业的本科高年级学生与研究生，也为政策制定者、科研人员、企业和投资机构提供了重要参考。

Working Papers

  • “How Costly to Sell a Company? A Structural Analysis of Takeover Auctions,” with Dong-Hyuk Kim. (under review). SSRN.

    Abstract To explain why sellers in takeover auctions limit bidders entry, we structurally measure economic costs incurred by the seller for inviting an additional bidder. Our auction model allows bidders to discount their synergy values when rivals obtain the target company’s confidential information, which induces the information cost. We identify the model primitives with unobserved heterogeneity, as confidential information is latent. From a sample of U.S. M&As, we find that the unobserved heterogeneity is critical, bidders lower values by 11.9% for each rival, and the information (operation) cost amounts to 1.3% (4.1%) of the equilibrium deal value for a representative target.
  • “Designing Emissions Trading Schemes for a Price-Regulated and Concentrated Industry: Insights from China’s Power Sector,” with Dong-Hyuk Kim and Hui Qiao. (under review). SSRN.
    Abstract We analyze the impact of emission trading systems, such as tradable performance standards (TPS) and cap-and-trade (C&T) schemes, in China's coal-fired generation sector characterized by price regulation and high concentration. Our oligopoly model shows that TPS and C&T partially offset the adverse effects of power prices regulated below equilibrium. Unlike C&T, TPS further facilitates production reallocation towards low-emission firms, suggesting its efficacy in emission reduction. From market data, we uncover cost functions for five major firms in Guangdong province to conduct realistic policy simulations. Compared to the current TPS setup, the optimal TPS and C&T under the regulated price reduce emissions by 11.1 and 7.6 million tonnes, respectively. The optimal TPS enhances social welfare by 250 million RMB, while the optimal C&T decreases it by 485 million RMB. Moreover, the optimal TPS above approximates the case where the power price is further adjusted to maximize social welfare.
  • “Electric Vehicle Adoption and Energy Prices: Evidence from Four Nordic Countries,”with Xiao-Bing Zhang, Jiayi Xu, Ramazan Sari, and Yanlai Chu. (under review)
    Abstract While the transport sector accounts for around 25% of the EU’s total GHG emissions, the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) plays an important role for EU to reach its net zero emissions goal. In addition to the widely used subsidies or tax exemption for EV purchases, energy prices, i.e., electricity price and gasoline price, can also be considered as instruments for government to induce consumers into EVs over ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles. Using a unique panel of EV registrations at the product-level from four Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden), this paper investigates how electricity prices and gasoline prices stimulate the adoption of EVs. The results show that gasoline price has a more statistically significant effect on the adoption of EVs, compared with electricity price. On average, 1% increase in gasoline price would increase the sales of EVs by 0.85% and the effect is larger for EV models with relatively lower purchase cost (where the effect of electricity price on stimulating adoption is also found statistically significant) and those with less-known brands. Further simulation results show that a 1% increase in the gasoline price would reduce the lifecycle GHG emissions of new automobiles by 0.16%. Our study highlights the importance of energy prices in accelerating EV adoption and mitigating carbon emissions in Nordic countries.

  • “Decoupling Urban Development and Land Use Carbon Emissions in Megacities,” with Shan Guo, Qiyang Xiong, Mingxiang Gao, Ziyan Meng, Yang Wang, Weiyi Xia, and Zhan-Ming Chen. (under review).

  • “How Can Human Capital Accessibility Accelerate Economic Green Transformation? Evidence from Threshold and Intermediary Effects,”with Yang Kun, Mo Donglin, Huang Chunlei, Zeng Liangen, and Xuejing Li. (under review)

Works in progress

  • “Optimal Shortlisting Rule with Entry Control by An Informed Seller.”
    Abstract This study is a theoretical extension of my job market paper of takeover auctions, where indicative bidding and shortlisting is a common practice. I first develop a two-stage auction model with entry control by an informed seller who observes bidders’ initial types (signals). Then I study how the seller, who has information valuable to the bidders, maximizes his expected profit by shortlisting potential bidders into the final-stage auction. The shortlisted bidders are asymmetric in their types (private valuation plus beliefs) because their private beliefs about the other shortlisted bidders rely on their private initial types. Except for takeover auctions, this model also describes many real-world auctions with a qualification stage, such as a real estate sale.
  • “Optimal Auction Design with Selective Entry.”
    Abstract This paper studies the optimal auction design by a revenue-maximizing seller in a two-stage auction model with selective entry. Following Stegeman (1996) and Lu (2009), I consider the feasible semidirect mechanism with a symmetric threshold-entry. In order to implement the optimal entry threshold, we need to consider a generalized virtual value, which is non-monotone in general. To handle the non-monotonicity of the generalized virtual value, I use the ironing technique described in Myerson (1981) to obtain a monotone (ironed) virtual value. Then we select the optimal mechanism to maximize the (ironed) virtual value.
  • “Market Power in Electricity Markets with Renewables: The Effects of Ownership and Forward Contract Allocation,” with Jing Long.
    Abstract Motivated by the growth of renewable generation and development of electricity market in China, this study analyzes the impact of renewable penetration on the market outcomes under different market and ownership structure. We construct a two-stage oligopolistic model consisting symmetric strategic suppliers and competitive fringe suppliers who are allowed to make production decisions for each of their generation technology. Based on the theoretical model, we further conduct a series of simulation study to illustrate the theoretical result by exploring different set of model parameter configurations. We find that the amount of price decline could be partially or fully reduced when strategic suppliers a large proportion of renewable generation assets as a result of market power. Using the ownership and capacity information of the “big-five” electricity groups, Our simulation shows that this ownership effect will emerge in the future Chinese electricity market according to China’s renewable policy and targets. Furthermore, the forward contracting stage is pro-competitive or even over-competitive, depending on both the market and ownership structure.
  • “Optimal Storage Adoption Level for Wind Farms: Evidence from China,” with Yucheng Qian and Hui Qiao.