Building State Capacity: A Quantification of Pre-Qin China

主    讲：董保民（河南大学经济学院）

主    持：刘瑞明（中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院）

时    间：2019年5月8日（周三）14:00-15:30

地    点：中国人民大学崇德西楼（原科研楼A座）815会议室

摘要: The pre-Qin period, particularly the Spring and Autumn period (770BC-481BC) and the Warring States period (480BC-221BC) witnessed the great transformation of the Chinese society from a classical feudal system to a two millennium long centralized empire. The scale and ferocity of the war increased tremendously from Spring and Autumn to Warring States time. Aggression wars are used as a proxy for state capacity since the fiscal capacity, the governance capacity, and public goods provision capacity as three main dimensions of state capacity, are all incorporated in the capacity to wage wars. Using panel data on Great Wall construction in related states; time spans that one or more prime ministers were installed; counties established chronically by the states; natural disasters; disaster or famine relief; flights of high rank nobility or officials; time and nature of the “self-strengthening reform”; etc., we regress the offensive wars against institutional and control variables.  Our panel limited dependent variable models indicate that institutional factors such as county establishment, installment of prime ministers, and self-strengthening reforms, had substantial effect on a state’s capacity to wage offensive wars, and the statistical significance of the coefficient is surprisingly high.  Furthermore, a pro-Legalist reform outperformed the pro-Confucian reforms in cultivating state capacity.

主讲人简介：董保民，男，现任河南大学经济学院教授、博士生导师，2015年起被聘为河南省特聘教授。同时担任亚洲开发银行经济咨询专家、全国博弈论专业学会理事。2004年获加拿大康科迪亚大学经济学博士。先后在美国加州大学圣芭芭拉分校，美国斯坦福大学经济学系进行研究。近年来先后在World Economy, Review of International Economics, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, Review of Development Economics, Economic Modelling, Economic Record, China Economic Review, Journal of Regulatory Economics 以及《经济研究》，《经济学（季刊）》等国内外一流经济学期刊发表相关学术论文三十多篇。出版了《信息经济学讲义》和《合作博弈论》两本学术著作。多次主办、协办相关国际会议，并曾被邀请组织计量经济学会亚洲会议分会以及SAET学会年会的分会。在国际博弈论大会、世界经济史大会等国际会议上多次宣讲论文。目前研究领域主要是国际经济学、经济史、产业组织理论、博弈论等。

中国人民大学国家发展与战略研究院

教师与博士后事务部