Revolution modernizes education: The dynamic consequences of state building (Job Market Paper)
Abstract: The 1911 Revolution was the first democratic revolution in Chinese history. It overthrew monarchical rule and established the first republican government in China. This paper explores the impact of the 1911 Revolution and the subsequent establishment of a republic on the modernization of China's education system. Employing a panel data set across 1759 counties and exploring the variations in revolutionary participation, I demonstrate that the revolution significantly contributed to the advancement of modern education. Counties that actively supported the revolution through violent actions between 1911 and 1912 established a greater number of modern educational facilities and enrolled more students in the post-revolution period. After the revolution, these counties had, on average, 0.15 more middle schools, 23 more middle school enrollments, 3 more higher primary schools, and 129 more higher primary school enrollments, 18 more lower primary schools, and 749 more students enrolled in lower primary schools compared to counties that did not participate. Estimates based on the military station instrumental variable align with the baseline results. Mechanisms may include expanded education funding, higher intensity of revolutionary organization, and more effective local control. Counties that established military governments during the revolution experienced faster expansion of modern schooling than counties that engaged in violent participation without establishing such governments or those that participated peacefully. Counties whose mayors had been appointed under the imperial government but supported the revolution also experienced faster growth in modern education.
Can disaster relief reduce conflicts? Evidence from imperial China (1644-1911) (with Ruiming Liu and Christian Cox)
Abstract: This study investigates whether government disaster relief measures, such as tax reductions and food aid, effectively mitigate social conflicts. To address this question, We are compiling a unique prefecture-level dataset on disasters, government relief responses, and social unrest in the Chinese Empire from 1644 to 1911. The data was extracted from the imperial government records which contains 500 million words using artificial intelligence (LLMs). Based on these data, we found that the state capacity of the Chinese Empire began to decline sharply in the early 19th century. The government reduced the frequency of disaster relief and provided little to no food aid. Thereafter, the level of social instability rose rapidly. In the 1911 revolution that brought an end to the monarch, provinces that had received less disaster relief indeed experienced more uprisings, whereas provinces closer to the capital that had received substantial disaster relief largely refrained from participating in the rebellion.
Decollectivization and Agricultural Productivity: Revisiting the 1978 Household Responsibility System Using Gazetteer Data
Abstract: A substantial body of research has already examined the impact of China’s 1978 decollectivization on agricultural productivity (Lin 1992; Ferguson and Kim 2023). My research builds on this literature by exploiting newly constructed data from Chinese county gazetteers and applying the difference-in-differences framework developed by Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021) to estimate the effects of adopting the Household Responsibility System (HRS) on agricultural productivity. Preliminary results show that grain yield per acre increased significantly after 1978, indicating substantial productivity gains. I also find that both the acreage allocated to oil crops such as rapeseed, peanuts, and sesame and the yield of oil crops per acre rose significantly following the reforms. These patterns suggest that farmers would not have reallocated land toward oil crop production if food had remained scarce, as doing so would have entailed a heightened risk of starvation. The results therefore imply that agricultural productivity improved sufficiently to relax subsistence constraints. In addition, my preliminary findings show that the agricultural tax rate was reduced by half after 1978, falling from 11 percent to 5.5 percent, while total agricultural tax revenue collected from rural households did not decline significantly. This divergence provides further evidence of improved agricultural productivity.