Recent Publications:

  • The Economic Impact of the West: A Reappraisal” in The Cambridge Economic History of China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 354-413, 2022

  • “The Political Economy of China's Great Leap Famine” in The Cambridge Economic History of China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 354-413, 2022

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  • Trading Favours through the Revolving Door: Evidence from China’s Primary Land Market” (Ting CHEN, Li HAN, and Jiaxin XIE). The Economic Journal 133(649): 70-97, January 2023.

  • “Surname Distance and Technology Diffusion: The Case of the Adoption of Maize in Late Imperial China” (with Ying BAI). Journal of Economic Growth, 27, 569-607, 2022.

  • “War Shocks, Migration, and Historical Spatial Development in China” (with Ting CHEN). Regional Science and Urban Economics, 94, 103718, 2022.

  • “Malthus Goes to China: The Effect of “Positive Checks” on Grain Market Development, 1736–1910” (with Yanfeng GU). The Journal of Economic History 81 (4): 1137-1172, 2021.

  • “Political Elites and Hometown Favoritism in Famine-stricken China” (with Titi ZHOU). Journal of Comparative Economics 49 (1): 22-37, 2021.

  • Social Mobility in Late Imperial China: Reconsidering the Ladder of Success Hypothesis (with Qin JIANG). Modern China 47(5): 628-661, 2021.

  • “Long Live Keju! The Persistent Effects of China’s Civil Examination System” (with Ting CHEN and Chicheng MA). The Economic Journal 130 (631): 2030-2064, October 2020.
    Winner of 2020 Royal Economic Society Prize for the best paper published in the Economic Journal in 2020.

  • “Busting the “Princelings”: The Campaign against Corruption in China’s Primary Land Market” (with Ting CHEN). The Quarterly Journal of Economics 134 (1): 185-226, 2019.

  • “Do Land Revenue Windfalls Create A Political Resource Curse? Evidence from China” (with Ting CHEN), Journal of Development Economics 123: 86-106, 2016.

  • “Of Maize and Men: The Effect of a New World Crop on Population and Economic Growth in China” (with Shuo CHEN). Journal of Economic Growth 21 (1): 71-99, 2016.

  • “Fiscal Incentives and Policy Choices of Local Governments: Evidence from China” (with Li HAN). Journal of Development Economics 116: 89-104, 2015.

  • “Diffusing Knowledge While Spreading God’s Message: Protestantism and Economic Prosperity in China, 1840-1920” (with Ying BAI). Journal of the European Economic Association 13 (4): 669-698, 2015.

  • “Can Cultural Norms Reduce Conflicts? Confucianism and Peasant Rebellions in Qing China” (with Chicheng MA). Journal of Development Economics, 111: 132-149, 2014.

  • “Autarky and the Rise and Fall of Piracy in Sixteenth-Century China” (with Chicheng MA). The Journal of Economic History, 74 (2): 509-534, 2014.

  • “The Emperor Strikes Back: Political Status, Career Incentives, and Grain Procurement during China’s Great Leap Forward.” Political Science Research and Methods, 2 (2): 179-211, 2014.

  • “The Tragedy of the Nomenclature: Career Incentives and Political Radicalism during China’s Great Leap Famine” (with Shuo CHEN). American Political Science Review, 105 (1): 27-45, 2011.

  • “Climate Shocks and Sino-nomadic Conflict” (with Ying BAI). The Review of Economics and Statistics 93 (3): 970–98, 2011.