Research

My research is in economic history, political economy, and development economics, with a regional focus on China. I use spatial, quantitative, and historical methods to study how geography, institutions, and administrative design have shaped long-run political and economic development.

Job Market Paper

Boundary Manipulation in Qing China’s Administrative Hierarchy

Abstract: How do states draw their administrative boundaries? While geography offers a natural template for administrative division, boundaries are often manipulated to serve political ends. This paper examines boundary manipulation across the administrative hierarchy of Qing China (1644–1911), comparing the provincial and prefectural boundaries of 1820 with hypothetical units constructed from geographical attributes. At the provincial level, I confirm the deliberate manipulation documented in the literature, with the most misaligned provinces lying along the Qinling–Huaihe divide between north and south China. At the prefectural level, I find no evidence of manipulation, as misalignment is spatially diffuse and reflects physiography rather than strategy. The provincial manipulation, moreover, did not penetrate downward, as it operated by reallocating intact prefectures rather than redrawing their boundaries. These findings reveal a tradeoff in boundary design between political stability and administrative efficiency, with the state securing control at the top of the hierarchy while preserving geographical coherence below.

Presentations: The 1st International Symposium on Empirical Political Economy and Quantitative Economic History (scheduled); The 12th Annual Symposium on Quantitative History; The 12th Hong Kong Economic Association Biennial Conference; NUS Applied Economics Explorations Seminar.

Draft available upon request.

Working Papers

When Peace Made the State: Song China in Comparative Perspective

With Tuan-Hwee Sng and Shengyi Zhang — draft in preparation

Abstract: State capacity is conventionally treated as a scalar. We argue that there are gains from conceptualizing it as comprising two dimensions: reach, the depth of the state’s formal administrative and fiscal presence in local society, and coordination, its ability to mobilize resources across jurisdictions for concerted action. We develop a model showing that while the two dimensions tend to go hand in hand in small- and medium-sized polities, they face an organizational tradeoff in large polities, such that strengthening one can weaken the other. In absolute empires, rulers primarily concerned with internal usurpation adopt flat, closely monitored structures that facilitate extraction but constrain military coordination, whereas rulers primarily concerned with threats originating outside the regime adopt hierarchical structures with the opposite properties. Military pressure may therefore reduce, rather than increase, fiscal revenue. We evaluate these predictions through Northern Song (960–1127) and High Qing (1683–1799) China. Our findings help explain the apparent paradox of Song China: a state capable of sustaining a high tax-to-GDP ratio yet organizationally constrained in its capacity for military expansion, in contrast to the early modern European states central to bellicist accounts. More broadly, our study delimits the scope of bellicist theories of state formation.

Work in Progress

A Tale of Two Rivers

With Youhong Lin and Tuan-Hwee Sng

Pre-Doctoral Research

Prior to my PhD, I worked as a Research Associate at Harvard Business School on Omnia Juncta in Uno: Foreign Powers and Trademark Protection in Shanghai’s Concession Era (L. Alfaro, G. Bao, M. Chen, J. Hong, and C. Steinwender), studying how legal institutions shaped firm behavior in early twentieth-century Shanghai.