Zichen Wang

M.A. candidate in Economics, IESR, Jinan University

I study how large language models can construct credible economic measures from unstructured data, and how geopolitical forces shape scientific production. I also build AI tools that augment — rather than replace — how researchers read and work with academic literature.

Research

Assessing the Quality of Personality Measures Generated by Large Language Models ready for submission · PNAS
Can an LLM provide a low-cost, scalable measure of Big Five traits from student letters, and do these measures meaningfully predict future outcomes? We treat the LLM as an additional informant in a multi-informant framework and show that AI ratings retain distinct predictive power alongside teacher, student, and guardian reports.
The Effects of China–US Tensions on Science: Evidence from the arXiv Dataset work in progress
Using ~541,000 arXiv CS preprints linked to OpenAlex and a continuous DID design around the August 2018 NIH investigations, we find that topics with greater overseas-Chinese diaspora exposure experienced a persistent citation decline — while publication volume, content novelty, and first-year citations remained stable, pointing to weakened long-run knowledge diffusion.

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Projects

frowang.com
An AI-native paper reading and research platform. The web reader supports agent-generated deep-reading reports that help researchers filter papers worth a careful read and understand them faster. Paper APIs let local agents (Codex, Claude Code) plug into a personal paper library for literature management and cross-paper work.
AI Econ Research Mentor Agent
A "cyber mentor" for junior researchers — undergraduates, graduate students, and early-career faculty — built on a structured knowledge base of ~40,000 papers from 30+ top economics and business journals (2000–2026). Using agentic search over this corpus, it supports academic writing, econometric method learning, research topic discovery, and ongoing research guidance.

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