Xufeng Liu

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at The Ohio State University. I am a development economist working at the intersections of health and environmental economics, studying constraints on households’ access to essential services and economic opportunities in low- and middle-income countries. My research combines quasi-experimental methods, randomized evaluations, administrative and geospatial data, and primary fieldwork in Nigeria, Uganda, and Ghana.

My job market paper (co-authored with Lingyan Hu) studies how Nigeria's fuel subsidy removal in May 2023 that tripled pump prices overnight affected healthcare for pregnant women and young children. By digitizing government records and recovering the pre-reform fuel-supply network, we identify the effect of higher fuel prices on healthcare use. We find that declines in healthcare utilization are concentrated among poor and rural households—even though richer, more urban households received the largest direct benefits from the subsidy. This mismatch suggests that compensation based only on foregone subsidy benefits may miss the households bearing the largest adjustment costs.