This paper proposes a Bayesian alternative to the synthetic control method for comparative case studies. We adopt a Bayesian posterior predictive approach to Rubin's causal model, which allows researchers to make inferences about both individual and average treatment effects on treated...

This paper takes a novel perspective on the selection of leaders in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by focusing on career tracks of high-level CCP officials. Career tracks are defined as clusters of similar career trajectories with respect to both vertical and horizontal movements. We measure...

This paper introduces a unified framework of counterfactual estimation for time-series cross-sectional data, which estimates the average treatment effect on the treated by directly imputing treated counterfactuals. Its special cases include several newly developed methods, such as the fixed...

Multiplicative interaction models are widely used in social science to examine whether the relationship between an outcome and an independent variable changes with a moderating variable. Current empirical practice tends to overlook two important problems. First, these models assume a linear...

This paper examines the role of social capital in disaster relief during China's Great Famine of 1958-1961. We use the number of genealogies—books recording family trees—as a proxy for family clans, one of the most important vehicles of social capital in rural China. Using a county-year...

The study of ideology in authoritarian regimes --- of how public preferences are configured and constrained --- has received relatively little scholarly attention. Using data from a large-scale online survey, we study ideology in China. We find that public preferences are weakly constrained, and...

How much does it matter whether Democrats or Republicans control the government? Unless the two parties converge completely, election outcomes should have some impact on policy, but the existing evidence for policy effects of party control is surprisingly weak and inconsistent. We bring clarity...