Celebrating the 45th Anniversary of the University of Macau:
Technology, Parenting, and the Rich-Poor Educational Gap: A Digital Footprint Approach
Prof. Yongheng DENG
Professor and John P. Morgridge Distinguished Chair in Business
Department of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics
Wisconsin School of Business
United States
Date: 19 March 2026 (Thursday)
Time: 10:30-12:00
Venue: E22-G008
Host: Prof. Rose LAI, Professor in Finance
Abstract
We study how online instruction affects educational inequality using a natural experiment from Guangdong Province, China, where local governments imposed varying durations of online teaching during COVID-19 (2020-2021). Leveraging anonymized smartphone data, we identify families with graduating primary school children, school type, and proxies for family wealth. Longer online instruction disproportionately benefits children from wealthier families, widening achievement gaps. Parental engagement, measured by time at home and education-related app use, explains part of this effect. Our findings suggest that when instructional technology interacts with unequal household resources, it can exacerbate rather than mitigate educational inequality.
Speaker
Prof. Yongheng DENG is the John P. Morgridge Distinguished Chair Professor in Business, and Director of the Global Real Estate Master’s Program (GREM) in the Department of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin – Madison. He was the recipient of the 2021 Erwin A. Gaumnitz Distinguished Faculty Research Award. Professor DENG’s research pertains to a wide variety of issues in real estate finance, housing and urban economics worldwide, including asset pricing and risk analysis focusing on the mortgage, mortgage- backed security and real estate capital markets; econometric analysis of competing risks of mortgage prepayment and default with unobserved heterogeneity; climate change risks and revaluation of the real estate markets; sustainable development; political economy and policy analysis of the housing markets in China and Asia.
Professor DENG has published his research works in leading economics and finance journals such as Econometrica, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, Review of Finance, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, China Economic Review, European Economic Review, Capitalism and Society, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Real Estate Economics, Journal of Housing Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, International Real Estate Review, Journal of Money Credit and Banking, and Pacific-Basin Finance Journal.
All are welcome!
