Data and Code For "State Formation and Bureaucratization: Evidence from Pre-Imperial China"

This is the replication package for <i>State Formation and
Bureaucratization: Evidence from Pre-Imperial China</i>, to be published in the <i>Journal of Economic History</i>. 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 consistent with
empirical tests and historical cases, and offer broader implications for the
political divergence between China and Europe.