About
My name is Fengtao Wan, and I am a third-year PhD student in Marketing at the UCL School of Management, supervised by Yiting Deng and Wei Miao. My research focuses on digital platforms, using applied econometrics to understand consumer behavior in digital environments. Before joining UCL, I completed an MPhil in Business Data Science and a Bachelor’s in Finance at Lingnan College, Sun Yat-sen University.
Feel free to contact me at fengtao.wan.23 [at] SPAM0.ac.uk where SPAM0 should be replaced by ucl.
Research Interests
- Substantive: Digital Marketing, Platform Economy
- Methodological: Causal Inference, Machine Learning
Work in Progress
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Holiday or Hangover? Housing Market Response to a Temporary Tax Cut
with Yiting Deng, Yongdong Liu and Anja Lambrecht
Abstract: We study how the 2020-2021 UK Stamp Duty Land Tax Holiday affected housing market behavior and long-term resale outcomes. Using data from the UK’s largest online housing platform, we combine propensity score matching (PSM) with a difference-in-differences (DiD) design to compare properties exposed to the tax cut with those already exempt. The holiday caused a sharp short-run tightening of market conditions: prices rose, transactions accelerated, and the probability of sale increased. Price effects were strongest in more deprived areas, where market pressure intensified most. Yet the boom did not translate into lasting gains. Properties bought during the holiday experienced lower RoI at resale than comparable exempt properties, indicating that treated buyers paid a temporary premium that reduced long-run returns. Overall, temporary transaction tax relief can stimulate activity and amplify short-run pressures, but delivers limited long-run benefits to buyers.
