Visiting Scholar: Alexander Shapoval

Summary

Alexander (Sasha) Shapoval visited the Stone Center from April 27 to May 5, 2024 to advance a joint research project on intergenerational mobility in the Qing Dynasty China with Director Steven Durlauf and Postdoctoral Scholar Kristina Butaeva. An expert in the mathematical modeling of economic processes, he contributed to efforts to enhance the existing measurement approaches for studying intergenerational mobility employing stochastic processes. Most of the existing literature on Markov chain-based mobility measures relies on the assumption of the homogeneity of the Markov chain, which implies that a transition matrix does not change over time.

The working paper, which employs a unique dataset, the “China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset, Liaoning” (CMGPD-LN), proposes a non-homogeneous Markov chain approach for measuring social mobility. The CMGPD-LN dataset allows to trace the evolution of transition matrices up to six generations providing a unique opportunity to study the evolution of multigenerational mobility in Qing Dynasty China with the proposed new non-homogeneous Markov chain mobility measures.

Relevant Publication

• Butaeva K., Durlauf S., and Shapoval A. Forthcoming. Intergenerational Mobility in Qing Dynasty China.