We hypothesize that besides technology and resource expansion, risk-mitigation improvements pushed the Malthusian limits to population growth in pre-industrial societies. During 976-1850 CE, China’s population increased by elevenfold while the Confucian clan emerged as the key risk-sharing...

What made finance develop in the West but not in China? We argue that long before modern finance, China chose to rely on the kinship-based Confucian clan, whereas the West chose the corporate entity combined with impersonal instruments, to deal with the challenges of interpersonal risk sharing...