Lingyi Wei

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Utah. I am on the 2026–27 academic job market.

My research focuses on economic development, international economics, political economy, and the Chinese economy. My dissertation, Understanding the Structure of the Capitalist World-System, measures global economic hierarchy using cross-country income distributions and labor terms of trade for more than 170 countries. I find that the hierarchy has remained stable since 1950, but that lower-income countries moved up in labor terms of trade after the 2008 financial crisis.

I am the 2026–27 Dissertation Fellow of the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE).

Job Market Paper
All Labors Are Equal, But Some Labor Is More “Equal” Than Others: Labor Terms of Trade and the Capitalist World-System

The first systematic worldwide estimates of labor terms of trade, for more than 170 countries over 1990–2017. More on my research →

Education