His research centers on Environmental Economics, Climate Innovation, and the Economics of Climate Change. His recent research leverages causal inference methods, data science algorithms (e.g., LLMs and NLP), and GIS tools to explore intriguing topics, including the drivers and obstacles to global climate innovation, the economic and environmental impacts of China’s climate policy, and the identification and quantification of the financial consequences of climate risks in China.

His scholarly contributions have been published in top-tier academic journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics, the Journal of Regional Science, and others. He has served as an Associate Editor for Environment and Development Economics and as a member of the editorial council of JAERE and JEEM, top journals in environmental economics. His research projects on China’s Climate Policy and Climate Innovation have been funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (General Program, Junior Program, and Urgent Program). His research and perspectives on climate policy and the energy transition have been covered by Nature Climate Change Highlight reports and by world-leading media, including the Financial Times, Nature News in Focus, BBC Worklife, South China Morning Post, and others.

Cui has a B.S. in economics and mathematics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, an M.S. in economics from Wuhan University, and a Ph.D. in economics from Iowa State University. Before joining Duke Kunshan, he was an Associate Professor at the School of Economics and Management at Wuhan University and a Post-doctoral Research Associate at Iowa State University.