Complementary Roles of Connections and Performance in Political Selection in China

Who becomes a top politician in China? We focus on provincial leaders and examine how their chance of being promoted depends on performance and connections with top politicians. We find a positive correlation between promotion and growth that is robustly stronger for connected provincial leaders than for unconnected ones.

Pollution for Promotion

This paper provides evidence on the impact of political incentives on the environment using the case of China's pollution. Guided by a simple career concerns model with the choice of dirty and clean technologies, I examine empirically how promotion incentives of provincial governors affect pollution and find that stronger career concerns increase pollution.

Decentralization, Collusion and Coalmine Deaths

This paper investigates how collusion between regulators and firms affects workplace safety using the case of China's coalmine deaths. We find that decentralization increases coalmine death because collusion is easier under decentralization. We also find that this increase in mortality is larger for the regulators with lower transaction costs.

The Legacies of Forced Freedom: China's Treaty Ports

This paper investigates the long-run development of China's treaty ports from the mid-18th century until today. I document the dynamic development paths of treaty ports and their neighbours in alternate phases of closedness and openness. I also provide suggestive evidence to understand the advantage of treaty ports in the long run.

Weather Shocks, Sweet Potatoes and Peasant Revolts in Historical China

I use data covering 267 prefectures over four centuries to investigate how weather shocks and the introduction of a drought-resistant crop affected peasant revolts. I find that droughts increased the likelihood of peasant revolts and the effect of droughts got mitigated by the adoption of sweet potatoes.