An Huang

Welcome!

An Huang (黄安) is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the School of Economics, Sichuan University.

He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Monash University in 2025. From 2023 to 2024, he was a visiting Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago (Booth School of Business) and the University of Michigan (School of Information).

His research is in behavioral economics, cultural economics and development economics. He studies how economic conditions shape variation in human behavior and psychology. Methodologically, his work relies on tools from experimental economics and causal inference.

Emails: anhuang96 [at] gmail.com or anhuang [at] scu.edu.cn

Office Hours: Thursdays, 15:00-17:00 (North 514, SOE Building)

Working Papers

[2] Exclusion and the Origin of Intergroup Bias

Yan Chen, An Huang

It has been shown that intergroup bias can facilitate the provision of public goods. This project reverses the causal arrow and proposes that the provision of public goods plays a role in shaping intergroup bias.

[1] Paddy and Prejudice: Evidence from a Natural Experiment on the Agricultural Origins of Prejudice

An Huang, Paulo Santos, Russell Smyth under review

Prejudiced attitudes are less prevalent in areas where paddy rice has long been practiced. This relationship is mediated by historical exposure to better integrated markets, itself derived from paddy's higher land productivity, likely reflecting the opportunities for interpersonal contact created by markets.

Publications

[3] Sea-Fishing Cultures Show Rare Blend of Tight Social Ties and Openness to Strangers

(with Thomas Talhelm) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), forthcoming

[2] A Collectivism Index for Investigating Cultural Variation in China across Regions and Time

(with Liuqing Wei, Thomas Talhelm, Jiong Zhu, Alexander S. English) Nature Scientific Data, 2o26, vol. 13 (1), 469

[1] Behavioral Adaptation to Improved Environmental Quality: Evidence from a Sanitation Intervention

(with Lisa Cameron, Paulo Santos, Milan Thomas) Health Economics, 2025, vol. 34 (11), pp. 2037-2058.

Members of a commune pedaled waterwheels to supply water in 1962 China

Rice Cultivation in China (David Jallaud)