“Product Display Room” and “General Director Office” of a Chinese Manufacturer in Binh Duong, Vietnam

I Study the Global Mobility of Capital and Labor

I am a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Harvard’s Department of Government. Trained in both Comparative Politics and International Relations, I work at the intersection of International and Comparative Political Economy, focusing on the politics of capital and labor in the context of globalization.

My dissertation tackles two related puzzles in globalization and development: Does the offshoring of production to developing countries benefit their workers economically and politically? Given these impacts, does labor in developing countries support openness to foreign capital, as political economy scholars assume?

My other projects also examine the politics of capital, labor, and globalization, engaging with several related literatures, including:

  • the causes and impacts of global production and foreign direct investment

  • labor rights and labor migration

  • the roles of national identity in capital and labor flows and globalization

I have regional expertise in China and Japan and have also conducted fieldwork in Indonesia and Vietnam to study foreign firms there.

“Product Display Room” and “General Director Office” of a Chinese Manufacturer in Binh Duong, Vietnam (July 2024)

At Harvard, I am also an AM candidate in the Department of Statistics and a resident affiliate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. I am also affiliated with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA), the WCFIA Research Cluster on Business and Government, the WCFIA Program on US-Japan Relations, and the Harvard Center for International Development. My research has also received support from the Harvard University Asia Center and the Institute for Economic and Social Research (LPEM) at Universitas Indonesia.

Before coming to Harvard, I spent three years at Stanford, studying comparative politics and East Asia as a master’s student in East Asian Studies and then working as a data analyst at the Center on Food Security and the Environment. Born and raised in Shandong, China, I studied Japanese and International Relations at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, during which I also spent time at universities in Tokyo, Seoul, and Singapore.

  • Does Nationalism Generate Opposition to Globalization?

    • Presentation: MPSA (2024)

  • Do International Tax Laws Harm Developing States? Domestic Politics, Tax Treaties, and the Right to Tax Foreign Capital

    • Presentation: Asian PolMeth (2024); APSA (2024)

  • Does Democracy Lead to Economic Openness? Political Representation of Labor and Restrictions on Investors' Exit Options

Working Papers

  • (Dissertation project, tentative title) The Curse of Nationality: Foreign Investors, Labor, and Governments in the Global South

  • Who Wins? A New Perspective on the Distributive Consequences of Globalization in the Global South

  • Career Path and Political Preferences: How Economic Self-Interest Evolves (with Yujin Zhang)

  • Missingness in Dyadic Datasets (with Naijia Liu and Jing Qian)

Work in Progress