Dr. Yanling Wang

Associate Dean, Equity Diversity and Inclusion; Full Professor

• PhD in Economics, Georgetown University; MA in Economics, Georgetown University and Renmin University of China; BA in Economics, Renmin University of China
• D387A Loeb Building, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6
• Email Dr. Yanling Wang

• Visit the Website

Professor Wang joined the NPSIA faculty in July 2003 as Assistant Professor of International Affairs after obtaining her PhD in Economics at Georgetown University. She worked at the World Bank as a consultant from 2001 to 2003 while being a PhD candidate, and as a researcher in the State Economic & Trade Commission, P.R. China from 1995 to 1997, after obtaining her MA in Economics from Renmin University of China.

At Carleton, she was tenured in 2007, promoted to Associate Professor in 2008, and to Full Professor in 2015.

She served as NPSIA’s Associate Director (PhD Program) from 2019 to 2023.

She currently serves as Associate Dean, Equity and Inclusion, at the Faculty of Public and Global Affairs (FPGA).

Professor Wang also served as President for Canadian Women Economists Network (CWEN) (2008—2009), President for the Chinese Economists Society (CES) (2010—2011), the Chair of Regent for the Chinese Economists Society (2012), and an executive committee member for Canadian Women Economists Committee (CWEC) (2018-2021).

Overall Research Focus/Expertise

Professor Wang’s research focuses on empirical analyses of international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) at both the macro and micro levels. Her work spans a wide range of topics within these two areas.
Her PhD dissertation examined the effects of imports from developed countries on productivity in developing countries, arguing that imports embed the technologies of the producing countries.
Using Canadian plant-level data, she has analyzed various effects of FDI on manufacturing plants, from productivity to survival, with particular attention to FDI’s overall impacts—within-industry effects as well as upstream and downstream linkages.
Since 2013, Professor Wang has also studied the expansion of Chinese firms in international trade and the effects of FDI in China, with a focus on ownership structures—state-owned, privately-owned, and foreign-owned firms. In particular, she has investigated how China’s policy changes and evolving operating environment have influenced foreign investors’ consolidation of equity shares in joint ventures.
Her findings have been published in peer-reviewed journals including the Canadian Journal of Economics, Economic Inquiry, Review of International Economics, China Economic Review, Journal of Development Studies, Contemporary Economic Policy, and the International Journal of the Economics of Business, among others.

Current Projects

Professor Wang currently is working on two projects.

She examines whether and how Canadian firms have been utilizing Canada’s free trade agreements in forming their global value chains.

Using World Bank’s Business Climate Survey for China, she studies Chinese firms’ trade dynamics amid global protectionism.

Recent Publications

• “Service sector liberalization and firms’ carbon emission intensity reduction: Evidence from China” (with Jiaxuan Gao and Hongjun Xie), 99 (2025) Article #101956. Journal of Asian Economics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asieco.2025.101956
• “North-South Trade-related Technology Diffusion and the East Asia-Latin America Productivity Gap” (with Maurice Schiff), 22(3-4): 348-358, 2023. World Trade Review.
• “Chinese Firms’ Export Dynamics: Experimental but Promising” (with Wei Wei), 12:1: 10-23, 2020. Transnational Economic Review.
• “A Push Over Trade Barriers: Firms’ Access to External Finance and Their Sales Hierarchy” (with Ninghua Ye), 52(6): 464-487, 2019. The Chinese Economy.
• “From Honeymoon to Divorce: Institution Quality and Foreign Investors’ Ownership Consolidation in China” (with Qun Bao and Hongjun Xie). 57(1): 372-390, 2019. Economic Inquiry.

Willing to support students in the following areas of research

Professor Wang will be happy to support students in their research to examine empirical issues of international trade and FDI, particularly with a strong econometric foundation.