Ms. Cai has experience in applying economic principles, utilizing statistical programs, and applying statistical methodology to provide information for scientific research. She manages and analyzes large administrative databases such as the Workforce Investment Act Standardized Record Data (WIASRD) for workforce related research. She reconstructs and updates Public Workforce System Data (PWSD) using government data reports on Unemployment Insurance and employment service programs, and uses this data for assessment of the impact of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on workforce programs.
Her data management and econometric analysis skills have also been applied to Kalamazoo County public school student files, as well as on various survey data such as American Community Survey, Current Population Survey, and American Time Use Survey.
Ms. Cai is also familiar with the area of occupational licensing. She constructed a panel data set on the state regulation of therapists and developed a study of its labor market consequences.
Her analytical experience includes working with cross-sectional and panel data on firm-level and country-level data in the transition economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Her recent projects include work on regional student transition on school performance outcomes and performance analyses on Workforce Investment Act program participants. Recent publications include: “Implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Workforce Development and Unemployment Insurance Provisions;” and “A Methodology for Setting State and Local Regression-Adjusted Performance Targets for Workforce Investment Act Programs.”
Her degrees include a PhD and a M.A. in Applied Economics, from Western Michigan University, and a Bachelors of Business Management, from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.