Tax extraction is often low in absolutist regimes. Why are absolutists unable to convert power into revenue? Supported by evidence from Imperial China, we explain this puzzle with a principal-agent model which reveals that absolutists, unconstrained by rule of law and unable to commit to not...

The role of township-owned enterprises in the rapid growth of the Chinese economy during reform is widely acknowledged. Beginning in the mid-1990s, however, these firms began to be privatized. Perhaps the most striking feature of this process is that it has not occurred uniformly across...

A hedonic analysis of principal-agent employment contracts is developed in which workers and employers exchange labor services and contractual payment patterns and is applied to contract data from a household-level survey in rural China in 1935. The results indicate that credit market...