Le Wang is Chong K. Liew Chair and Professor of Economics at the University of Oklahoma. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of Econometric Reviews, Journal of Labor Research, and China Economic Review. He also holds a special term professorship at Jinan University. Prior to joining OU, he has held positions at the University of Alabama, the University of New Hampshire, and University of Minnesota. He was also a Women and Public Policy Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. He received his Ph.D in Economics from Southern Methodist University in 2006 and his B.A. in International Finance from Jinan University, Guangzhou, China in 2001.

His research focuses on questions in the subfields of microeconomics -- labor and demographic economics, development economics and public economics -- with a particular emphasis on the development and use of distributional/nonparametric and program evaluation methods to address issues in these areas. Specifically, he has written papers examining the returns to education in U.S. and China, the returns to language skills among immigrants, the gender earnings gap, and marriages and fertility issues. He has also written papers on politicians’ behavior, health care expenditure, and growth convergence. His work has been published in journals such as Journal of Econometrics, Econometrics Journal, Economics of Education Review, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Health Economics, Industrial Relations, and Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in October 2011.