The Economic Consequences of Political Hierarchy: Evidence from Regime Changes in China, AD1000-2000

Ying Bai and Ruixue Jia

No 26652, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We argue that China, with its long history, a relatively stable political system, and multiple regime changes, provides us an opportunity to investigate the political economy of administrative hierarchy. Using prefecture-level panel data and exploiting regime changes during AD1000-2000, we find that gaining and losing importance in the political hierarchy led to the rise and decline of different prefectures (measured by population density and urbanization). Moreover, political hierarchy shapes regional development via both political and market channels (reflected by public employment and transportation networks). More broadly, our study serves as new evidence on how politics shapes economic geography and offers a context to understand changes in economic activity location in the long run.

JEL-codes: H11 N95 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-his, nep-pol and nep-ure
Note: PE POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26652.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26652

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26652

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().