Dr. Yi, Junjian

Neither did I study in high school nor in college. Before entering the post-graduate school, I studied most courses at the high school and college level by myself, including Economics, Calculus, Linear Algebra, Probability Theory, Statistics, English, and Chinese Ancient Literature, among others.

Born in 1978, I grew up in a small Hunan village in inland China. After completing primary school in the village, I entered into the No. 1 Middle School of Xiangxiang City in 1990. Due to the tight family budget constraint, I chose to study at a technical school in a nearby city, Yiyang Marketing (gong xiao) School, rather than at a regular high school after I completed the middle school in 1993.

At age 18, I began working as a salesman for a state owned beer enterprise, Xiangxiang Beer Co. Ltd, in my hometown and won the Distinguished Employee award in 1996-1997. I continued to sell beer there for the next few years until I resigned in 2002.

During most of my technical school years and all throughout my time as a salesman, I had been registered at the National Self-Taught Higher Education Examinations. I bought textbooks from book stores, studied during my free time, and took examinations twice a year on weekends. With years of self-studying, I obtained the associate college diploma and the college diploma in 1997 and 2001, respectively, majoring in Marketing. But I do not have a bachelor degree.

Subsequently, I took the National Postgraduate Entrance Examination and enrolled into Zhejiang University as a full-time post-graduate student in 2002. After obtaining an M.A. degree in Economics in 2005, I continued to pursue M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and received the degrees in 2007 and 2011 respectively.

Since 2011, I have been conducting research as a post-doctoral scholar in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. My research interest lies in Labor and Demographic Economics and Economic Development.