publications

• “Strategies of a Rising Power: Chinese Economic Influence in Regional International Organizations.” 2025. British Journal of Political Science. [pdf] [appendix] [replication]
  How does China use development finance to gain influence in international organizations? Leveraging the exogenous rotation of ASEAN and African Union Chairmanship, I estimate the effect of regional leadership on Chinese commitments. Results suggest that Chinese projects are politically motivated only when the lending and recipient entities are linked to the Chinese and host governments. Governments that assume the Chair received seven times more commitments from Chinese government agencies relative to non-Chair years, a $90 million increase for the average project. By contrast, there is no evidence to suggest that Chinese banks act as agents of Beijing. Moreover, I find a consistent null relationship between temporary UN Security Council status and Chinese finance, unlike established findings about Western donors, suggesting that China is deliberately seeking regional influence. These results underscore the importance of considering the specific actors involved in China’s economic statecraft.

  • Winner of the 2025 Perry World House/Foreign Affairs Emerging Scholars Policy Prize
  • Coverage: Foreign Affairs, CGSP, US-China Nexus Podcast

working papers

• “Decentralized Economic Statecraft”
  I study how domestic politics shape China’s foreign aid. I first document that China’s aid system is decentralized, giving provincial politicians influence over aid decisions. Driven by promotion incentives, I argue that provincial governors use foreign aid to improve economic performance at home. Pairing original project-level data on provincial actors involved in Chinese aid projects from 2000 to 2017 with a regression discontinuity design exploiting age-based promotion rules, I show that promotion-eligible governors allocate more aid than their ineligible counterparts. The increase is concentrated in projects implemented by home-province firms and financed through China’s policy banks. Finally, I show that projects involving provincial firms raise provincial corporate tax revenue, linking overseas aid to promotion-relevant domestic outcomes. These findings uncover a subnational political economy of Chinese aid and show how domestic institutions shape economic statecraft even in autocratic regimes.

• “Electoral Incentives and the Choice of Infrastructure Development Aid”
  I develop a theory of sovereign borrowing for infrastructure development rooted in the survival incentives of political leaders in the Global South. Comparing Chinese and Western development finance, I argue that Chinese loans carry higher fiscal costs but offer short-term electoral benefits, because projects can be completed within a single electoral cycle. Electorally motivated leaders prioritize speedy infrastructure delivery over long-term debt costs. I test this theory by documenting distinct electoral cycles in the announcement and completion of Chinese projects and benchmarking patterns against World Bank projects. The results suggest that incumbents secure Chinese loans early in their terms to ensure project completion before re-election. I further illustrate the mechanism through a case study of Indonesia’s high-speed rail, and use interviews to document the institutional sources of China’s speed advantage. This paper shows how electoral incentives shape developing countries’ financing choices, with implications for development outcomes and geopolitical competition among donors.

• “Partisan Favoritism in Public Spending: Evidence from Congressional Earmarks” (with Liam Bethlendy and Andrew Myers)
  We study whether members of Congress favor their co-partisan voters in federal spending. Pairing an original, geocoded dataset covering U.S. earmark requests and allocations since the resumption of earmarking in FY2022 with a regression discontinuity design in House general elections, we find strong evidence of partisan favoritism. Narrowly electing a Democrat rather than a Republican shifts the average requested earmark dollar toward areas that are 8 percentage points more Democratic and increases requests to Democratic strongholds by 19 percentage points. This disparity persists within policy areas, is not explained by socio-demographic correlates of partisanship, extends beyond close elections, and carries through to enacted spending. Our results show that—rather than broadening representation—strong electoral incentives can push legislators to serve their supporters at the expense of their broader constituency.

in progress

• “Beyond Beijing: Provincial Actors in Chinese Aid”
• “Where is the China Lobby?”
• “Aid and Conflict, by Donor”
• “Financing for Votes: Electoral Incentives and Creditor Choice in Public Investment” (with Keyi Tang)