Research Assistant Professor
Xiting Zhuang
Department of Agribusiness & Applied Economics, North Dakota State University
I investigate how supply chain disruptions, trade policy, and economic shocks affect agricultural markets and social outcomes, combining causal inference with machine learning and NLP to turn large-scale data into evidence for policy.
Ph.D. Agricultural & Resource Economics, UConn
M.S. Computer Science, Georgia Tech
Richard H. Barry Hall 438, Fargo, ND
Methods & Data
Research Agenda
Research highlights →Trade disruptions & tariff policy
Container shortages, port congestion, low water on the Mississippi, and the 2025 U.S.–China tariff escalation all act as trade costs, and I measure how much of each actually lands on U.S. agricultural exporters rather than on importers or farmers. Identification comes from the timing and geography of each shock, applied to shipment-level customs data, and the estimates go back out as briefs written for the people who set the policy.
Representative work
Supply chain disruptions and containerized agricultural exports from California ports ↗Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 2023
Machine learning & AI
Screening thousands of abstracts by hand is the binding constraint on systematic reviews, so I build and benchmark text-classification and LLM-based screening pipelines against human coders. A second strand asks which data-analytics competencies agricultural curricula actually require, and how to teach them.
Representative work
Machine learning-assisted abstract screening on learning analytics: A step-by-step tutorial ↗Systematic Reviews, 2026
Social outcomes & household welfare
A second line of work asks how economic conditions and social institutions shape violence and welfare inside households, mostly using large-scale Chinese survey data. Arranged marriage, parental education, work environment, and clan culture each turn out to have measurable effects on abuse and on civic commitment.
Representative work
Tradition or tragedy: Arranged marriages and domestic violence ↗International Review of Law and Economics, 2026
Environment & trade
China's tightening environmental standards and its ban on imported waste redrew global waste flows and the backhaul leg of maritime shipping, while climate shocks such as the 2022 Mississippi River drought reroute agricultural exports outright. I estimate the trade effects of environmental policy and of climate disruption using trade flow data and quasi-experimental designs.
Representative work
U.S. agricultural exports and the 2022 Mississippi River drought ↗Agribusiness, 2025
Working Papers & In Progress
All 26 papers →Xiting Zhuang*, Shawn Arita, & Sandro Steinbach · Submitted, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy
Zhihong Xu*, Shuai Ma, Anjorin Ezekiel Adeyemi, Jaehyun Ahn, Ashlynn Kogut, Xiting Zhuang, Guadalupe Ceja, Matt Baker, Kent Toyonaga, Tian Chen, Fahmida Husain Choudhury, & Abdul Saboor Rahmany · Revise & resubmit, Translational Animal Science
Xiting Zhuang*, Carlos Zurita, & Sandro Steinbach · Under review, Economics Letters
Weidong Tian & Xiting Zhuang*
Xiting Zhuang*
Recent News
May 2026Policy & Outreach
All 18 briefs →NDSU Agricultural Trade Monitor 2026-05 · 2026
NDSU Agricultural Trade Monitor 2026-02 · 2026
NDSU Agricultural Trade Monitor 2026-01 · 2026