Cheryl Wu — Economics Ph.D. Student at Yale

About Me

I am a Ph.D. student in Economics at Yale University. My research focuses on the intersection of growth, economic history, and political economy, with particular emphasis on technology adoption and innovation.

Outside of my academic work, I enjoy photography, playing the piano, and baking.

Research interests: growth, economic history, AI, political economy, innovation, technology adoption

Research

Working Papers

2026
The Economics of Recursive Self-Improvement with Tom Cunningham, Lukas Althoff, Basil Halperin, Brian Jabarian, Andrew Koh, Arjun Ramani, Phil Trammell, Parker Whitfill
2025
Public Displays of Alignment with Joris Mueller, Jaya Wen, Zi Yang Kang

Research Notes

2026
What We Learned from 1,604 Chinese AI Job Postings with Jean-Stanislas Denain, Anson Ho
2026
Do Benchmarks Overstate AI Capabilities? Evidence from SWE-Bench Verified with Parker Whitfill, Nate Rush, Joel Becker
2026
Final Training Runs Account for a Minority of R&D Compute Spending with Jean-Stanislas Denain (equal contribution)
2025
Will Compute Bottlenecks Prevent an Intelligence Explosion? with Parker Whitfill (equal contribution)

Works in Progress

Adoption of Western Studies and Growth during the Meiji Restoration
FDI and Codification with Kexin Feng
Finance Situation of Chinese AI Firms with Konstantin Pilz

CV & Credentials

Education

2023–Present
Ph.D. in Economics Yale University Fields: Growth, Trade
2017–2021
B.S. in Mathematics, B.A. in Economics with Honors University of Chicago

Positions

2026–Present
Research Scholar, Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI) US-China AI competition, AI governance
2026
GovAI Winter Fellow

Download Full CV (PDF)

Contact Me

Have a question about my research? Interested in collaboration? Send me a message.