Luorao Bian

Hello!

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics from University of California, Santa Barbara. I am on the 2025–2026 job market. 

My fields are Environmental, Labor, Urban, and Health Economics. My work uses quasi-experimental designs and high-resolution spatial data to analyze how environmental conditions and labor market regulations shape health, inequality, and welfare in cities. You can find my CV here.

My Job Market Paper examines the environmental implications of city minimum wage ordinances, a popular place-based labor regulation intended to raise earnings and living standards for low-wage workers. Leveraging the variations in minimum wage levels across 17 ordinances in California, I find that

• Higher local wage floors increase rents and incentivize workers to live and commute from areas outside the policy jurisdiction, leading to increased traffic congestion, and worsen air quality in neighboring areas

• The worsening of air quality disproportionately affects poorer and minority communities, partly due to their limited adaptation capacity rather than workers re-sorting into these neighborhoods

• Up to 2.8% of traffic emissions can be attributed to these ordinances, roughly comparable to a 10% change in gasoline price.

• Unintended congestion and air quality costs are sizable, offsetting 40% of the intended wage gain for lower-wage workers and undermining the equity goals of the policies