State Formation and Bureaucratization: Evidence from Pre-Imperial China
研究先秦中国军事冲突与国家建设的关系，通过不完全契约模型分析防御战与进攻战对中央集权或地方分权的影响，并用历史案例和实证证据验证。
This paper studies the relationship between military conflicts and state-building in pre-imperial China. I develop an incomplete contract model to examine rulers’ and local administrators’ incentives in conflict. Defensive wars drive decentralization: landowning local administrators have more to gain from a successful defense and are therefore more committed to it. Offensive wars drive centralization: the landowning ruler has personnel control over the non-land-owning local administrator and can therefore force the latter to participate in less lucrative attacks. Model predictions are corroborated with empirical evidence and historical case studies, and offer broader implications for the political divergence between China and Europe.