In this paper, I document three stylized facts on leaders, institutions, and re-election incentives, using cross-country data: (1) in democracies, the positive relationship between leaders' performance and their capability is significantly less pronounced in their last term, when they do not...

In this paper, I document two stylized facts on leaders, institutions, and economic development: (1) leaders in democracies have more experience than those in non-democracies; and (2) more experienced leaders lead to better economic performance in democracies and higher regime stability in...

In this paper, I study how anti-corruption shocks affect Chinese city leaders through political factions or social networks, or more specifically, how sharing college or workplace connections with government officials who have been investigated for corruption affects the city leaders' economic...

China's manufacturing sector has been a key source of the economy's dynamism. Analysis after 2007 however is hampered by problems in the key data source for empirical analysis, the National Bureau of Statistics' (NBS) annual survey of industrial firms. Issues include missing information on value...