This paper argues that political and market concentration level explains why non-democracies often under-invest in institutional infrastructure and legal capacity. Economic growth challenges this equilibrium and incentivizes rulers to invest in institutional infrastructure complementary to...

Law-lauding ideology and rhetoric has been increasingly evident in China since the end of the Cultural Revolution. In conjunction with decades of rapid and prolific legal institution-building, this has provided rich data for scholarship on the trajectory of China's legal system, and the nature...

In the context of harmonisation of arbitration law and practice worldwide, to what extent do local legal traditions still infuence local arbitration practices, especially at a time when non-Western countries are playing an increasingly important role in international commercial and financial...

China has in the last decade and especially since its entry into the WTO made considerable efforts to improve its judicial system, perfectly aware of the necessity to provide a stable framework for foreign investment and economic growth. An important part of this reform is the development of...

Based on a comprehensive treaty survey, the article presents the general approaches to sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Chinese International Investment Agreements (IIAs). With the global trend towards investor responsibilisation, a new generation of investment policies places inclusive...

Eric Jones has found that excessive taxes were detrimental for pre-modern China's economic growth whereas moderate taxes were conducive for Europe's economic growth. This paper provides a political-economic answer to the question why these two tax systems came about. Taxation is only feasible...

Patterns of political unification and fragmentation have crucial implications for comparative economic development. Diamond (1997) famously argued that “fractured land” was responsible for China's tendency toward political unification and Europe's protracted political fragmentation. We build...

This paper studies the causes and consequences of political centralization and fragmentation in China and Europe. We argue that a severe and unidirectional threat of external invasion fostered centralization in China while Europe faced a wider variety of smaller external threats and remained...

Chinese investors are now the largest number of foreign investors in US residential and commercial real estate. Many buy in upscale, exclusive markets. It is little known, however, that in the past Chinese faced severe property discrimination in the US. This paper traces three eras of Chinese...

Starting with the framework of New Institutional Economics, this Comment examines the institutional arrangements of Chinese and U.S. governance, and then scrutinizes their respective policy responses to the financial collapse of 2008. The latent thesis is that, notwithstanding differences in...