A joint research team of faculty members and students at the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University (doctoral supervisor ZHENG Yuhuang and doctoral student SONG Luyang) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (doctoral supervisor Jackson Lu and doctoral student Laura Changlan Wang) recently published its research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the top scientific journal.

The team identified positive effects of public health policies beyond safeguarding national health through 10 detailed studies with abundant various methods and diverse scenarios, and by using large samples (N=68243). The National Natural Science Foundation of China supported the research effort.

Founded in 1914, PNAS is one of the world's most-cited scientific journals, on par with Nature and Science. It publishes cutting-edge and top research results with outstanding scientific contributions and exerts extensive scientific influence in various disciplines. It is extremely difficult to publish in on account of its high standards. PNAS articles cover 36 sub-disciplines, such as medicine, chemistry, biology, physics, computer science and social science. Five of its disciplines are directly related to the field of humanities and social sciences: demography, economic science, political science, psychology and cognitive science and social science. It is more difficult to publish research on humanities and social sciences than science and engineering in PNAS.