Zhongying Gan

Working Paper:

"Inspecting the Inspectors: The Causes and Consequences of Restaurant Inspector Leniency"
(sole author) [link]
Abstract: This paper studies inspector leniency as a challenge to regulation enforcement in the context of Los Angeles County restaurant hygiene inspections. Inspectors score restaurants numerically, but only letter grades reflecting wide score intervals are mandatorily disclosed. It is documented in the literature that inspectors bump scores up for restaurants at the margin of a higher grade, referred to as inspector leniency. This study shows that inspector leniency has compromised the effectiveness of health grades in signaling restaurants' hygiene conditions, as restaurants whose grades are inflated to A have significantly worse hygiene conditions than restaurants who have earned their A. Moreover, inspector leniency discourages hygiene improvements by preventing a re-inspection that a restaurant would likely request if they did not experience grade inflation. The paper then uncovers a novel motive behind inspector leniency: inspectors avoiding work that does not increase promotion prospects, and proposes changes to the inspector performance evaluation policy as a remedy. The paper follows by revisiting  a well-documented motive, attachment to the restaurants formed through repeated inspections, and proposes more frequent inspector rotation as a remedy. The two drastically different remedies highlight the importance of understanding inspector motives in improving enforcement. Lastly, I evaluate the effects of these two remedies on inspectors' grading and restaurants' sanitation efforts under a theoretical framework.

"Freeway Congestion and Labor Force Participation: Evidence from Greater Los Angeles" (sole author) [link to preliminary draft]
Abstract: Traffic congestion is a growing problem in major metropolitan areas. This paper develops a novel approach to measuring historical congestion at the commute-route level by using open-sourced road network data augmented with historical speeds collected from freeway traffic detectors. Using annual data on tract-to-tract commute flows within Greater Los Angeles and congestion on the commute  from 2010 to 2019, the paper finds that the number of commuters on a given route decreases as congestion along the route increases. In addition, the paper finds suggestive evidence that this decrease more likely results from workers changing jobs for a less-congested commute at the cost of lower pay, than from workers relocating their residences for a less-congested commute, or dropping out of the labor market.

Published Paper:

"Do Electric Vehicle Charger Locations Respond to the Potential Charging Demands from Multi-Unit Dwellings? Evidence from Los Angeles County," Transport Policy, 138 (2023): 74-93.
(sole author) [link] [Replication Files] [Ken Small Award for Best Student Paper in Transportation Economics at UC Irvine]
Abstract: With the transportation sector being the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, states are actively planning the deployment of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). Mass adoption of PEVs requires attracting potential buyers living in multi-unit dwellings (MUDs). Given the current low adoption rate of PEVs in MUDs and MUD residents’ reliance on public charging, this paper studies whether there is a positive correlation between the number of public L2 chargers and MUD density (measured by total square footage of MUD per capita) across census block groups (CBGs) in LA County. The results show that high MUD-density CBGs and low MUD-density CBGs do not differ much in terms of the number of chargers. The charger-to-PEV-ratio range for MUD residents derived in this paper is below the ideal charger-to-PEV-ratio range in the literature. A direct policy implication is that more charging infrastructure should be made available to MUD residents. This includes public Level 2 chargers near MUDs, which are discussed in this paper, and onsite MUD charging, which is still at an early stage.