Geyi Zheng studies how internal constraints affect poor households and how poverty alleviating programs could be designed to bring out internal upward mobility to help them grow sustainably out of poverty. Zheng has worked at the Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC) of the World Bank Group before coming to UC Davis, where she worked under the registering property topic for Doing Business Project, which provides objective measures of business regulations for local firms in 190 economies in the world.