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Professor Yao discusses electoral reform in rural China, and investigates whether elections reduce local capture. Exploring a comprehensive dataset spanning from 1986 to 2008, the period when the reform rolled out sequentially across the country, his research finds that the dominant clan --- the largest surname lineage group maintaining an ancestor hall or a genealogy --- enjoys substantial advantages over other clans in office holding and per-capita landholding before the introduction of elections and these advantages disappear after elections are introduced. This result is robust to a variety of robustness checks. His research contributes to the existing literature by providing a before-and-after comparison to assess the impacts of political decentralization on local capture.

Open to all, informal lunch provided.

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