How do modern fiscal states arise? Perhaps the most dominant explanation, based on the European experience, is that democratic institutions that limited the extractive power of states-exemplified by the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England-paved the way for the rise of fiscal capacity and...

While Chinese leaders, including President Xi, do formulate grand strategies, they are also human and fallible — often, they themselves are unsure how to reach a goal; they overreach and later retreat; or they completely fail to anticipate certain problems and reactions. In order to accurately...

How do modern fiscal states arise? Perhaps the most dominant explanation, based on the European experience, is that democratic institutions that limited the extractive power of states-exemplified by the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England-paved the way for the rise of fiscal capacity and...

In 2005, the Chinese government deployed a new financial instrument to accelerate technological catch-up: government guidance funds (GGFs). These are funds established by central and local governments partnering with private venture capital to invest in state-selected priority sectors. GGFs...

One of the most intractable problems of development is the trap of “corruption-causing-poverty-causing-corruption.” In many developing countries, petty predatory corruption is rampant because public employees receive little pay, often at rates below subsistence, and corruption in turn drives...

The recent economic slowdown in the People's Republic of China (PRC) has triggered fear and even panic among global investors. In particular, observers are worried that manufacturing - the engine of the PRC's hypergrowth over the past decades - has hit the doldrums. This article shows that...

Corruption is conventionally measured in global indices as a one-dimensionalproblem—one score for every country—a practice that has profoundly shaped ourconceptualization of corruption and its relationship with capitalism. What if weunbundle corruption into qualitatively distinct types and...

The study of public administration in developing countries needs to look beyond the Weberian model as the only ideal-type of bureaucracy. When we assume that there exists only one gold standard of public administration, all other organizational forms that do not conform to the Weberian ideal are...

English Abstract: This study illuminates the important yet under-studied phenomenon of industrial transfer in China: the migration of capital and investment from wealthy coastal areas into poorer central and western provinces, beginning in the 2000s. By 2015, the value of domestic investment in...

Can China command its way to technological leadership by assigning ambitious targets to local governments? We focus on patents—a standard measure of innovation output. We employ an original dataset of 4.6 million patents filed in 333 Chinese cities from 1990 to 2014, and we also provide a...