Working Papers

• NEW: Human Capital, Unequal Opportunities, and Productivity Convergence: A Global Historical Perspective, 1800-2100, with N. Bharti, A. Gethin, T. Jenmana, Z. Mo, and T. Piketty, World Inequality Lab Working Paper, no. 2025/15. [whce.world]

• NEW: The Making of China and India in the 21st Century: Long-Run Human Capital Accumulation from 1900 to 2020, with Nitin Kumar Bharti, World Inequality Lab Working Paper, no. 2024/24.  [The Economist; EPW; Bloomberg; Hindustan Times; Ravish Kumar Official]

• NEW: Stationary Bandits, State Capacity, and the Malthusian Transition: The Lasting Impact of the Taiping Rebellion, with Weizheng Lai and L. Colin Xu, last updated in Jan 2024, Revise & Resubmit Journal of Economic Growth.  [VoxEu.org]

Publications

• Anti-Corruption Campaign in China: An Empirical Investigation, with Branko Milanovic and Yaoqi Lin, European Journal of Political Economy, Volume(85), 2024, 102559. 

• The Impact of Communist Party Membership on Wealth Distribution and Accumulation in Urban China, with Matteo Targa, World Development, Volume (181), 2024, 106660.

• Income and Wealth Inequality in Hong-Kong, 1981-2020: The Rise of Pluto-Communism?, with Thomas Piketty, The World Bank Economic Review, 2022, 36(4): 803–834.

• From workers to capitalists in less than two generations: A study of Chinese urban elite transformation between 1988 and 2013 , with Branko Milanovic and Filip Novokmet, The British Journal of Sociology, 2021, 72 (3): 478-513. [ VoxEu.org]

• Income Inequality and Ethnic Cleavages in Malaysia: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts (1984-2014), with Muhammed A. Khalid, Journal of Asian Economics, 2021, 72, 101252. 

• Capital Accumulation, Private Property and Rising Inequality in China, 1978-2015, with Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman,  American Economic Review, 2019, 109 (7): 2469-2496. [VoxEU.org] [Chinese translation]

• Memories of Colonial Law: The Inheritance of Human Capital and the Location of Joint Ventures in Early-Reform China, with Cheryl Long and Peter Murrell, China Economic Review, Volume(58), 2019, 101284.

• From Communism to Capitalism: Private versus Public Property and Inequality in China and Russia, with Filip Novokmet, Thomas Piketty, and Gabriel Zucman, American Economic Association: Papers and Proceedings, May 2018, 108:1-6. [VoxEu.org]

• Technology Spillovers from Chinese Outward Direct Investment: The Case of Ethiopia, with Mebratu Seyoum and Renshui Wu, China Economic Review, April 2015, Vol. 33 (1):35-49.

Book Chapters and Other Publications

• NEW: How Corruption Fuels Inequality in China, with Branko Milanovic, Foreign Affairs, September 11, 2024.

• Towards equity and sustainability? China's pension system reform moves center stage, World Inequality Lab Working Paper, no. 2021/13. 

• Inequality Perceptions and Redistributive Preferences: Literature Review and Proposal for the KLIPS Additional Survey, with Sunoong Hwang and Zhexun Mo, in Panel Data Quality Improvement Study (XIII), Lee, Kyung-Hee et al., 32--93. Sejong City, South Korea: Korea Labor Institute, 2023. 

• Distributional National Accounts Guidelines: Methods and Concepts used in the World Inequality Database, WIL, 2024.

Teaching

• Economic History of China on inequality (Short Course)

  1. • • Freie Universität Berlin, Germany                                                                              2022

       • Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia                                                    2023