Shaoda is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and an affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis in Development (BREAD). He also serves as the deputy faculty director of the China branches of the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI-China) and the Energy Policy Institute at UChicago (EPIC-China). His research interests span the fields of development economics, environmental economics, and political economy, with a regional focus on China.