CEP | People | Cong Peng

Biography

Dr Cong Peng is an Assistant Professor at the National School of Development, Peking University. Prior to this he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Cong received his PhD in Economic Geography from The London School of Economics in 2019. Cong’s research features using real-time data to solve pressing problems in international and urban economics, and connecting advances in data science with econometric methods.

Current areas of research include:

Urban Economics: E-commerce and traffic congestion; Urban development in Africa
International Economics: Belt and Road Initiative; Transportation development in Zambia

Publications

CEP discussion papers

Roads to development? Urbanization without growth in Zambia

This study explores the impacts of road improvements in a country characterized by "urbanization without growth". Our analysis reveals that, although road upgrades increase population growth, they do not significantly ad... Read more...

Wenfan Chen, Cong Peng and Yao Wang

12 December 2024

Journal article

Valuing the environmental benefits of canals and canal restoration using house prices

This article values the environmental benefits of historic, navigable canals using property values. We improve on standard methods by controlling for microgeographic fixed effects and applying a difference-in-differences... Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Cong Peng and Cheng Keat Tang

01 November 2021

Journal article

Colonial legacies: Shaping African cities

Institutions persisting from colonial rule affect the spatial structure and conditions under which 100s of millions of people live in Sub-saharan African cities. In a sample of 318 cities, Francophone cities have more co... Read more...

Neeraj Baruah, J. Vernon Henderson and Cong Peng

01 January 2021

CEP discussion papers

Does e-commerce reduce traffic congestion? Evidence from Alibaba Single Day shopping event

Traditional retail involves traffic both from warehouses to stores and from consumers to stores. E-commerce cuts intermediate traffic by delivering goods directly from the warehouses to the consumers. Although plenty of ... Read more...

Cong Peng

20 August 2019

CEP discussion papers

Valuing the environmental benefits of canals using house prices

The canal and waterway network in Britain provides a potentially valuable recreational and environmental amenity. In this paper, we estimate the value of this amenity based on how much households are willing to pay throu... Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Cong Peng and Cheng Keat Tang

14 March 2019

SERC Discussion Papers

Colonial Legacies: Shaping African Cities

Differential institutions imposed during colonial rule continue to affect the spatial structure and urban interactions in African cities. Based on a sample of 318 cities across 28 countries using satellite data on built ... Read more...

Neeraj Baruah, J. Vernon Henderson and Cong Peng

07 November 2017