Working papers
"High-Value Work and the Rise of Women: The Cotton Revolution and Gender Equality in China" [SSRN]
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Media Coverage: INET, Dissenter, Faculti, Aeon, Economics Detective, BBC Radio 4, Yale EGC
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Selected Presentations: Chicago Booth, LSE, Northwestern, NYU Stern, Toulouse, Barcelona GSE, SITE
"The Short- and Long-Run Effects of Affirmative Action: Evidence from Imperial China," with B. Zhang [SSRN] [CEPR dp]
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Media Coverage: The Long Run Blog
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Selected Presentations: Penn, Notre Dame, Oxford, NBER Economics of Culture and Institutions
"Values of China: Toward a Cultural Map" [SSRN]
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Selected Presentations: Toronto, UCLA Anderson, Helsinki GSE, AMSE, CESifo Venice Summer Institute
"Autocratic Rule and Social Capital: Evidence from Imperial China" [SSRN]
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Media Coverage: VoxDev, ChinaEconTalk, Penn's Exchange, Lipton Matthews, Quantitative History Blog, Washington Post
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Selected Presentations: Chicago Harris, Yale, UC San Diego, Bonn, NBER Organizational Economics
"Enlightenment Under Autocracy: The Origins of Liberalism in China," with X. Luo
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Selected Presentations: Yale, Durham, Queen's University Belfast, CEPR Economic History Symposium
Selected work in progress
"Women and Asylums" (first draft completed)
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Selected Presentations: Yale, NYU Stern, Trinity College Dublin, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
"British Industrialization and Cultural Change: Evidence from the Use of Proverbs," with E. Ash (first draft completed)
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Selected Presentations: Harvard, Paris School of Economics, Sciences Po, Bristol, Glasgow
"History as Evolution: The Case of China" (first draft completed)
“Raising Dragons,” with J. Nye.
"Violence and Missing Women in China," with T. Sng and S. Zhong
"Lunacy in Nineteenth-Century England: Trends and Determinants"
Publications
Articles
"Folklore," with S. Michalopoulos
Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 136, Issue 4, November 2021, pp. 1993–2046.
Editor's Choice PDF Appendix Slides Data
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Media Coverage: Broadstreet, GrowthChat, Impactful Research, Policy Implications, Barron's, EnDevEcon, Boston Globe, Development Impact, LSE Economic History Blog
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Selected Presentations: Bonn, Northwestern, Nottingham, Pompeu Fabra, Toulouse
Explorations in Economic History, Volume 63, January 2017, pp. 44–69. PDF Slides
Shorter works
"Predecessors to Qing Fiscal Conservatism: From Wang Yangming to Huang Zongxi and Gu Yanwu"
Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, Forthcoming (Symposium on the Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation). PDF
“Crowd-Sourced Chinese Genealogies as Data for Demographic and Economic History”
Explorations in Economic History, Volume 99, January 2026. PDF
Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, 3rd Edition, Academic Press, 2022. (Invited Reference) PDF
Book reviews
Book Review for "D. Ma and R. Von Glahn, The Cambridge Economic History of China. Volume II,"
Economic History Review, 76 (2023): 989-990. PDF
Economic History Review, 73 (2020): 335-336. PDF