I am an associate professor in the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
My research centers on the political economy of non-democracies with a regional focus on China. I am interested in how individual actors (e.g., citizens, firms) interact with the state and state agents that are not held accountable by elections, and how these interactions affect outcomes such as economic growth, government service, quality of institutions, and policy changes.
I received my PhD in Political Science from MIT and a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Grinnell College.
Research
Book
The Private Sector in Public Office: Selective Property Rights in China. 2019. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics Series.
Award: CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2020
Reviews: Foreign Affairs, 2020; Perspectives on Politics, 2020; Journal of Chinese Political Science, 2020; CHOICE, 2020; The China Quarterly, 2020; The China Journal, 2021
Media Coverage: The Monkey Cage (July 2020); New Books in Political Science with Susan Liebell (April 2020)
Journal Articles
"Underrepresented Outperformers: Female legislators in the Chinese Congress." 2024. With Xinrui Feng and Mingxing Liu. The China Quarterly, 257 (March): 59-74.
Media: East Asia Hotspots Podcast
"Stimulated Political Decisions: Local Leadership Turnover and Firm Subsidies in China." 2023. With Siyao Li. [paper and online appendix] Political Science Research and Methods, 11(1): 18-33.
"Ethnic Discrimination in Criminal Sentencing in China." 2022. With Rory Truex. [paper and online appendix] Journal of Politics, 84(4): 2294-99.
"Unpolluted Decisions: Air Quality and Judicial Outcomes in China." 2020. With Peichun Wang. Economics Letters, vol. 194, September 2020. [paper and online appendix]
"Anti-Muslim Bias in the Chinese Labor Market." 2020. With Chuyu Liu and Charles Crabtree. Journal of Comparative Economics, 48(2): 235-250. (lead article) [paper and online appendix]
Media: The Economist; South China Morning Post inkstone
"Violence Exposure and Support for State Use of Force in a Non-Democracy." 2019. With Kai Quek. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 6(2): 120–130. [paper and online appendix]
Award: The inaugural award for the Best JEPS Article Award (2019)
"Achieving Efficiency without Losing Accuracy: Strategies for Scale Reduction." 2018. With Krista Loose and Adam Berinsky. Social Science Quarterly. 99(2):563-582.
"Constituency Service Under Nondemocratic Rule: Evidence from China." 2017. With Greg Distelhorst. Journal of Politics. 79(3): 1024–1040. [dataverse]
Media: The New York Times; 论文大焖锅
"Ingroup Bias in Official Behavior: A National Field Experiment in China." 2014. With Greg Distelhorst. Quarterly Journal of Political Science. 9(2): 203–230. [replication package]
Media: The Economist
Selected Works in Progress
Not So Powerless: How Chinese Criminal Defense Lawyers Encourage Judge-Prosecutor Disagreement (with Jieun Kim)[paper][appendix]
China's Glass Ceiling (with Dorien Emmers, Qi Jiang, Huan Wang and Scott Rozelle)
Winning Hearts, Minds, and Tastebuds? Assessing Chinese Public Diplomacy (with Qian Liu)
The Private Sector in Public Service (book project)
Other Writing
"The Private Sector: Challenges and Opportunities During Xi's Second Term." China Leadership Monitor, Issue 59, Spring 2019
"身为一流学府，浙江大学应该沉默吗" 腾讯大家 December 2017
"Bringing Together the Studies of Ethnic Prejudice and Conflict in Chinese Politics." Comparative Politics Newsletter, Fall 2017
"Making Chinese Officials Accountable, Blog by Blog" with Greg Distelhorst and Diana Fu, Boston Review, September 27, 2016
"干部考察组怎样考干部" (With Qian Haoping), 南方周末 January 2012
Resting Paper