About
I am a fourth-year PhD student in Economics at Duke University.
My research interests are labor, macro, and spatial economics. I am interested in how family background, immigration policies, and labor market frictions shape inequality and distort the allocation of talent.
My CV is available here. You can contact me at runling.wu@duke.edu.
Working Papers
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Intergenerational Mobility in the Value of a Job (Jesse Wedewer's JMP)
October 2026·Working Paper
Intergenerational mobility is usually measured in income, yet workers value job amenities as well as pay. We measure intergenerational mobility in the value of a job, which reflects both amenities and pay. Using a revealed preference approach, we infer the value of each job from voluntary moves in the labor market, including job-to-job transitions and quits into nonemployment. We embed this approach in a job ladder model in which workers differ in preferences and job opportunities. Weekly benefit records let us distinguish quits, which reveal preferences, from layoffs, which do not. Using Danish administrative data, we document that there is 37% less intergenerational persistence in job value than in earnings: the rank-rank slope is 0.11 in job value and 0.18 in earnings. A key reason behind this gap is that the children of high-earning parents tend to hold jobs that pay more but have worse amenities. Evidence from surveys suggests that these jobs are more demanding: they involve greater competition, longer hours, and greater time pressure.
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The Worker and Firm Origins of Life-Cycle Wage Inequality (Submitted)
September 2026·Working Paper
Wage inequality widens substantially over the life cycle. We decompose this widening into worker and firm heterogeneity in returns to experience and sorting. We generalize the AKM model to allow wage growth to differ across workers and firms and develop a two-way clustering algorithm for estimation. Using Italian matched employer-employee data, we document substantial heterogeneity in both worker and firm growth effects. Worker growth accounts for two-thirds of the rise in life-cycle wage inequality, while firm growth accounts for the remaining third. Workers with more accumulated skills increasingly sort into high-paying firms over the life cycle.
Teaching
Teaching Assistant, Department of Economics, Duke University:
- Econ 702 — Macroeconomics I (PhD), Fall 2024
- Econ 706 — Macroeconomics II (PhD), Spring 2025
“The Micro and Macro Perspective of the Labor Market” Virtual Reading Group/Workshop
Jesse Wedewer and I co-organize the “Micro and Macro Perspective of the Labor Market” Virtual Reading Group/Workshop at Duke. An archive can be found here.
The format alternates between a reading group where a participant presents a published paper and a workshop where an invited speaker presents a working paper.
Please contact labor.public@gmail.com if you are interested in participating. Meetings are on Saturdays at 11 AM (ET) via Zoom.
Contact
Department of Economics, Duke University · Durham, NC
Email: runling.wu@duke.edu