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
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Selected Presentations: Chicago Booth, LSE, Northwestern, NYU Stern, Toulouse, Barcelona GSE, BREAD/CEPR/STICERD/TCD Conference on Development Economics, IZA/SOLE Transatlantic Meeting for Labor Economics, 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, UCL, POLECONUK, NBER Economics of Culture and Institutions, BSE Summer Forum, Northwestern New Economic History of China Conference, ASSA 2017/2022
"Values of China: Toward a Cultural Map" [SSRN]
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Selected Presentations: Toronto, Helsinki GSE, Utrecht, AMSE, PKU INSE, Harvard Workshop on Historical Kinship, Psychology, and Economic Prosperity, KCL Workshop in Comparative Politics & Political Economy, BSE Summer Forum, 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, NBER Summer Institute, Barcelona GSE
"Enlightenment Under Autocracy: The Origins of Liberalism in China," with X. Luo
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Selected Presentations: UChicago History and Theory of Capitalism Workshop, Yale Economic History Lunch, Durham, Queen's University Belfast, CEPR Economic History Symposium, EHS 2024
"Women and Asylums"
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Selected Presentations: Yale, NYU Stern, CUNY Stone Center, LSE, Trinity College Dublin, St Andrews, Warwick, University Carlos III of Madrid, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, EHS 2021, WEHC 2025
Selected work in progress
"British Industrialization and Cultural Change: Evidence from the Use of Proverbs," with E. Ash (first draft completed)
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Selected Presentations: Harvard, LSE, PSE, Sciences Po, Bristol, Glasgow, CAGE Frontier in Economic History Conference, ASSA 2024
"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
"Mental Illness in 19th-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, LEAP, NES, Northwestern, Nottingham, Pompeu Fabra, Toulouse, WEHC 2018, ASREC 2019
Explorations in Economic History, Volume 63, January 2017, pp. 44–69. PDF Slides
Short articles
“Crowd-Sourced Chinese Genealogies as Data for Demographic and Economic History”
Explorations in Economic History, Volume 99, January 2026. PDF
Book chapters
"Folklore"
In: Kurtz, L.R. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, vol. 4. Academic Press, 2022. 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