Working Paper

When electricity infrastructure adjusts slowly, expansion in one electricity-intensive industry can constrain subsequent local investment in another. We study this interaction between cannabis cultivation and data centers using close recreational cannabis ballots in a difference-in-discontinuities design and a new satellite measure of indoor cultivation. Legalization raises detected cultivation by 3.6 times the sample mean within five years. This increase implies about 22 megawatts of electricity demand from cultivation per county, 18 percent of the average county’s consumption. The active data center stock falls by 0.70 facilities per county and operating capacity by 16.2 megawatts. Retail electricity prices rise where cultivation expands, while total consumption does not move measurably. The decline in data centers begins in the ballot year and also appears in other-state counties on the same grid. We find little evidence of competition through shared labor markets. A discrete-choice model of data center siting implies that absent legalization, more capacity would be built in the narrowly passing states and annual electricity bills there would be 15.6 billion dollars lower.

How does an independent judiciary shape structural transformation? I study China’s staggered Trans-regional Jurisdiction of Administrative Litigation (TJAL) reform, which moved all lawsuits against local governments from the government’s own courts to external ones. Using difference-in-differences with household panel data, I find that the reform raises rural off-farm work participation by 8.9 percent and household income by 7.3 percent, with larger responses among households with low agricultural ability. The reform strengthens rural land rights, raising compensation per unit of land lost, so households can take off-farm work without forfeiting their land. It also raises the demand from non-farm activities, where active businesses increase by 6.0 percent and incumbent private firms raise assets per employee and hiring. Comparing villages by distance to the nearest city and by terrain ruggedness suggests the risk of losing land may be more influential than off-farm demand.

Do locally targeted initiatives promote local high-tech industries and, if so, how? We study the initiatives that Chinese prefecture governments launch by setting up Government Industrial Guidance Funds (GIGFs) for particular sectors, whose establishment gives each initiative a dated start. Exploiting the staggered timing of establishment across industries and prefectures, we find that these initiatives raise the number of firms in the targeted local sector by 8.7 percent within five years. Establishment brings new resources, from public capital to subsidies, tax refunds and procurement, that reach firms beyond the funds’ portfolios. The initiatives also coordinate private investment, drawing more private equity and credit into the targeted sector. The growth appears to compound into a local ecosystem, with denser knowledge, supplier and labor-market links, and persists after the funds stop investing. The implied output multiplier is about 1.9, and added tax revenue would match the fund size in about six years.

How does historical contingency shape long-run economic growth? I exploit China’s 1982–1984 administrative reorganization. Applying political criteria set in Beijing, it replaced much of the Mao-era provincial leadership with Deng Xiaoping’s younger technocrats. Using a continuous-treatment difference-in-differences design, I find that a one-percentage-point increase in replacement intensity raises provincial GDP by 1.8%. The effect appears in the first decade after the reorganization and is still as large four decades later. The growth is not driven by selection on economic potential, and an instrument based on predetermined retirement exposure points the same way.  High-replacement provinces adopted major pro-market reforms sooner and have more economic policy activity even decades later. They also saw faster private-sector expansion and stronger local administration. And the growth was not financed by transfers from Beijing. An early, politically driven personnel shock can start a self-reinforcing reform-growth process and leave provinces on divergent growth paths.

We study whether strengthening legal institutions can reduce civil conflict. We develop a simple conceptual framework linking legal capacity to conflict and test its predictions using the staggered roll-out of donor-funded judicial reforms across African countries in a difference-in-differences design. We find that judicial reforms reduced conflict by about 20%, with effects that grow over time and are concentrated in high-risk subnational regions. These impacts are driven by reforms that expand access to courts, while reforms that primarily improve judicial speed or quality have limited effect. Consistent with the model, reforms reduce civil–civil conflict most strongly where state enforcement is high and and reduce civil–state conflict only where judicial independence is strong. Using GDELT and survey data, we show that reforms increase trust in courts but not in other institutions. Economic growth effects cannot account for the decline in conflict, indicating that improved dispute resolution is the primary mechanism.

In economic history of China, there is a stigma attached to the traditional farming sector which has been commonly seen as the root course of technological backwardness, social inequality, mass poverty, class polarisation, social revolutions, and so forth. This study puts this stereotyped narrative to an acid test with reliable data from China’s first modern survey of the farming sector compiled by John Lossing Buck and his team. It re-examines the bona fide performance of China’s traditional agriculture in its ‘twilight stage’ before 1950. Thereafter, the Chinese Communists started radical programmes of collectivisation and state control over farming. Our results show that China’s traditional farming remained reasonable efficient in terms of agricultural productivity, farm wages and nutrition intake and certain growth potential remained for the sector.