A recent wave of economic research has studied the transformation of China from a poor country in the 1970s to a middle-income economy today. Based on this literature, we discuss the factors driving China’s development process. We provide a historical account of China’s rise, fall, and...

China's long-term economic dynamics pose a formidable challenge to economic historians. The Qing Empire (1644-1911), the world's largest national economy before 1800, experienced a tripling of population during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with no signs of diminishing per capita...

We model a game to show that the taxation level in an autocracy reflects the state¡¯s coercive power relative to people¡¯s capacity for violence. The model also specifies the mechanisms through which various factors affect relative state power. The model predicts that taxation level...

This paper compares economic outcomes across areas in India which were under direct British colonial rule with areas which were under indirect colonial rule. Controlling for selective annexation using a specific policy rule, I find that areas which experienced direct rule have significantly...

Autocrats experiencing a windfall in unearned income may find it optimal to donate to other countries some of the windfall in order to make the state a less attractive prize to potential insurgents. We put forward a model that makes that prediction, as well as the additional predictions that the...

Economic cooperation and trade relations are the cornerstones in EU-China relations. For several decades, their cooperation in economy and trade developed much more rapidly than their political relations. Dialogue at different levels covering a broad range of issues help institutionalize...

The notion that professional, efficient and non-corrupt bureaucracies foster economic growth is virtually uncontested. In spite of this wide consensus, central questions remain unanswered. Thus, while the harmful effects of dysfunctional administrations are extensively covered in the theoretical...

This paper investigates the effect of conflict on firms' output value and input misallocation in the context of Palestine during the Second Intifada. Using a unique establishment-level dataset, we compare firms' outcomes and input usage over time across districts experiencing differential...

I study identity marker based policies in the context of identity manipulation: I measure the extent of identity manipulation caused by such a policy and describe the misallocation of public resource this can lead to in the context of colonial Punjab. In particular, I analyze the impact on caste...