His research focuses on technological progress, economic growth, and international trade. His more recent work also involves formal models of political economy. His teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include Intermediate Macroeconomics and Political Economy.

He has had papers published in leading academic journals including Journal of Economic Theory, European Economic Review, Economic Theory, and Journal of Mathematical Economics. He serves as an associate editor of Economics of Transition and Institutional Change.

Deng has a B.A. in economics and B.Sc. in statistics from Peking University and Ph.D. in economics from the Johns Hopkins University. Before joining Duke Kunshan, he was an assistant professor at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Yale-NUS College, and the National University of Singapore. He was also an economist at Halle Institute for Economic Research in Germany and a visiting fellow at New York University Shanghai.