There is a long held but untested belief that affirmative action will level the playing field and eventually be unnecessary. We exploit academic institutional changes in the history of China to provide direct evidence. We show that a 200-year place-based quota policy successfully raised academic...

The steady decline of China’s comparative advantage in cheap labor manufacturing raises the question of which country(s) will replace China to be the next manufacturing export powerhouse. We provide empirical support that China might end up replacing itself through manufacturing reallocation...