From a paper co-authored by Yongheng Deng (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Shang-Jin Wei (Columbia University, FISF, and NBER) and Jing Wu (Tsinghua University)

Professor Deng and his co-authors propose a method to estimate not only the relative size of unofficial incomes but also the pervasiveness of corruption based on large asset purchases. Additionally, they applied this idea to a unique Chinese data and provide a first estimate of the proportion of officials who take in unofficial incomes. They have found that an average official’s unofficial income is 83% of his/her official income, and 57% of the officials have an unofficial income and this proportion rises with the rank. They also tested and reject the notion that unofficial incomes are a compensation for below-the-market government salaries.

Yongheng Deng is a Professor and the John P. Morgridge Distinguished Chair in Business, in the Department of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before joining Wisconsin School of Business, Professor Deng has served as a Provost's Chair Professor of Real Estate and Finance, Director of the Institute of Real Estate Studies, and Head of the Department of Real Estate, at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He was also a Professor in the Department of Finance at NUS Business School, and Director of the Lifecycle Financing Research Program at NUS Global Asia Institute. Professor Deng was also a Professor at the University of Southern California (USC), School of Policy, Planning and Development, and the Marshall School of Business.

Professor Deng holds a Ph.D. in Economics from University of California at Berkeley, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Wharton Real Estate Center, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. While Professor Deng’s recent research interest is in evaluating conditions in Asian and China’s real estate markets; his research pertains to a wide variety of issues in residential and commercial real estate finance and capital market worldwide. That includes real estate related financial capital market and asset-backed security pricing and risk analysis, econometric analysis of competing risks of mortgage prepayment and default with unobserved heterogeneity.

Professor Deng has published his research works in leading economics and finance journals. Some of those journals include “Econometrica,” “Journal of Financial Economics,” “Journal of Urban Economics,” “Review of Finance,” “China Economic Review,” “European Economic Review,” “Capitalism and Society,” and “Real Estate Economics,” among others. Major global media have frequently cited his research works, for example, “Wall Street Journal,” “New York Times,” “Economist Magazine,” “Telegraph,” “Forbes,” “People’s Daily” (China), and more.

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