In addition to the most pressing issues of the day, scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies focus their research on many regions of the world, from Beijing to Brazil.
Research Spotlight
The Ripple Effects of China’s College Expansion on American Universities
Researchers at SCCEI trace how China’s unprecedented expansion of higher education has impacted U.S. graduate education and local economies surrounding college towns.
While Nayib Bukele's style of authoritarianism may have some successes on paper, Beatriz Magaloni and Alberto Diaz-Cayeros argue that the regime is headed for a reckoning.
Time for Iran to Make a No-enrichment Nuclear Deal
The time has come for Iran’s leaders to reconsider their past intransigent, deceptive posture and instead pursue a nuclear power program that will benefit the Iranian people, write Abbas Milani and Siegfried Hecker.
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER),
May 5, 2025
China’s total fertility rate declined very little following implementation of the One Child Policy (OCP) in 1979/1980, but then fell sharply, by more than one-third, during the early 1990s. In this paper, we propose that strengthening bureaucratic incentives under the “One Vote Veto” (OVV) policy, which strictly prohibited career promotion for adherence failure, was necessary for more “effective” implementation of the OCP—and for its delayed impact on fertility. We use provincial variation in OVV implementation to estimate event study regression inputs needed to build actual and counterfactual sequential multi-decrement fertility life tables, finding that the policy explains 46% of China’s total fertility rate decline during the 1990s, driving it below replacement level. Use of intrauterine devices (IUDs, the most prevalent form of modern contraception in China) that was “recommended” by party officials increased by 133% under the policy, a relative increase more than four times as large as the increase in “voluntary” use. Overall, our paper suggests that population policy made a larger contribution to low fertility in China than suggested by past research. More generally, our paper highlights the central role of aligning bureaucratic incentives with public policy objectives, even in a centrally-planned economy like China’s.
Researchers analyzed three decades of sanctions on foreign aid to assess their impact on health. They hope the work can help government officials better understand and address how foreign policy decisions affect the well-being of local populations.
Part of "Deliberative Approaches to Inclusive Governance: An Essay Series Part of the Democratic Legitimacy for AI Initiative," produced by the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy.
This paper examines how power lawyers shape judicial and economic outcomes by studying the “revolving door” between judges and lawyers in China’s judicial system—namely, former judges who quit the bench to practice law. In otherwise identical lawsuits, revolving-door lawyers deliver 8−23% higher win rate for their clients. Their performance in home versus away courts suggests these gains stem from both “know how” and “know who.” We extend the theoretical framework of Dewatripont and Tirole (1999) to show that revolving-door lawyers create countervailing forces in society: they enhance judicial decision-making through evidence and reasoning, but also exploit strategic arguments and connections to bias outcomes in favor of their clients. We estimate a structural model of the judicial process to quantify these trade-offs and find that increasing the supply of power lawyers can have a non-monotonic effect on equilibrium judicial quality.
Federal IT is a worthy target for Musk and his team of efficiency hackers. It’s overpriced with various estimates pegging the government’s costs at two to four.
Policy experiments are crucial for fostering innovation and mitigating risks and can serve as catalysts for transformative changes. This study investigates the governance of policy experiments in China, focusing on how political factors shape their outcomes. It emphasizes the need to consider concurrent trials—related policy trials implemented simultaneously in a locality that can influence outcomes—when selecting comparable cases for analysis. Such consideration is critical, especially when the policy issue spans multiple sectors and the level of difficulty differs across sectors. By comparing five cities engaged in the same three decarbonization pilots between 2010 and 2015, Hangzhou and Xiamen are identified to have had similar initial conditions and goals but achieved divergent outcomes. This research uncovers the critical role of political leadership in achieving varying levels of decarbonization progress and identifies policy coherence with broader local priorities to be the key explanation for continued leadership attention and efforts devoted to decarbonization despite turnover. The study contributes to the literature by addressing the under-studied impact of political factors and concurrent trials, offering a replicable procedure for future research and practical policy applications.
The effects of psychological factors on complementary feeding behavior have been widely described, yet the mechanisms underlying the complex relationships among personality traits, self-efficacy, and complementary feeding behavior remain unclear. This cross-sectional study was conducted using a multi-stage cluster sampling process to select caregiver-child dyads in Western rural China. Personality traits, self-efficacy, and complementary feeding behavior were evaluated respectively. Both multiple logistic regression and Bayesian network structure (BNs) were used to explore these associations. A total of 787 caregiver-child dyads were enrolled. Results from multiple logistic regression indicated that caregivers with medium (OR = 2.05, p < 0.001) or high (OR = 1.58, p = 0.04) levels of extraversion, as well as those with high self-efficacy recording complementary feeding (OR = 2.08, p < 0.001), significantly increased the likelihood of meeting the criteria for the Infant and Child Feeding Index (ICFI) qualification. Further, BNs were employed to elucidate the pathways of influence, revealing a direct association between the caregiver's level of extraversion, level of self-efficacy and the ICFI. Additionally, the analysis indicated that a caregiver's openness indirectly influenced the ICFI through its influence on self-efficacy regarding complementary feeding. This is one of few studies exploring associations between personality traits, self-efficacy, and complementary feeding behavior. The study highlights the importance of understanding individual differences in caregiving and suggests that interventions should focus on enhancing caregivers' self-efficacy, rather than solely targeting personality traits.
