Title: AI and Overall Income Distribution: Unexpected Findings from China

Speaker: Wan Guanghua, Chair Professor, Nankai University.

Abstract: Focusing on "AI and overall income distribution", this lecture comprehensively demonstrates the profound impact and empirical findings of artificial intelligence on China’s income distribution pattern. It first explores how to construct district-level AI development indicators by accurately identifying AI technologies from massive patent data using a two-layer Chinese BERT classifier. Then, combined with CFPS micro-individual data, it systematically estimates the net effect of AI on overall income distribution using regression-based inequality decomposition. Empirically, the lecture deeply analyzes how AI exacerbates income inequality by increasing unemployment risk for low-income groups, expanding labor productivity gaps, raising capital returns, and suppressing labor shares, while significantly increasing individual income. It further reveals the heterogeneous impact of AI on income distribution across skill, task, and gender dimensions.

Date & time: 26 May 2026, 14:00 - 15:00

Venue: B321, Zhixin Building, Central Campus, Shandong University