题目：Warlords, Commercial Organizations, and Industrial Development in Early Twentieth-Century China

报告人：刘丛

时间：2016年12月8日下午1:30-3:00

地点：暨南大学中惠楼106B

主办方：暨南大学经济与社会研究院

报告人简介：

刘丛，上海财经大学经济学院助理教授，2016年获得亚利桑那大学经济学博士学位，2011年获得北京大学经济学学士学位。她的主要研究领域包括中国经济史、发展经济学、政治经济学、国际贸易。研究成果发表于《经济研究》等期刊。

摘要：

This paper examines how territory size affects industrial development using a newly complied dataset about early twentieth-century China. From 1916 to 1927, China was textit{de facto} divided into regions controlled by different warlords. While all warlords fought with each other for a larger territory, each province had different governance structure, depending on the total size of a warlords’ territory. Warlords with greater territory adopted a more decentralized political structure. I use variations in warlords’ territory size over time to perform a difference-in-differences analysis, examining the impact on newly established domestic industrial firms. I find that areas ruled by big warlords experienced greater increase in the number of new industrial firms. In addition, this pattern could be explained by the rise of local commercial organizations. Warlords with greater territory size relied more on commercial organization in local governance. I collect rich information to control for other socioeconomic conditions that were likely to affect industrial growth, including political riots, foreign settlements, and international trade. These results suggest that, similar as the western countries’ experience, commercial organizations played a supportive role in China’s early industrial development, yet these organizations required a decentralized political environment to form and function.