Nancy Qian

About

Nancy Qian is the James J. O’Connor Professor of Economics in the Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences Department at the Kellogg School of Management. She earned her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has held academic positions at Yale University, where she served as Associate Professor of Economics, and Brown University. She is the current President of the American Comparative Economics Association. Her research provides rigorous empirical evidence on the fundamental drivers of economic development, including geography, demography, human capital, institutions, and culture. Using theory-driven questions and innovative strategies with large modern and historical datasets, she examines development across global contexts. At Northwestern, she teaches across MBA, EMBA, Executive Education, and Ph.D. programs. She co-directs the Global Poverty Research Lab, founded the China Cluster, and established the China Econ Lab to analyze the Chinese economy. Her work has been featured in NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and the BBC. She regularly advises policymakers and business leaders on geopolitical risk and the global economy, particularly China, and is writing her first book under contract with the University of Chicago Press.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Political economy
• Law
• Development economics
• Public administration
• Economic geography
• Engineering
• Econometrics
• Geography

Selected publications

• On the road: Access to transportation infrastructure and economic growth in China

  Journal of Development Economics · 2020 · 824 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Discrimination and State Capacity: Evidence from Wwii U.S. Army Enlistment

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of NGO-Provided Aid on Government Capacity: Evidence from Uganda

  Journal of the European Economic Association · 2024-04-15 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract This paper investigates whether NGO-provided basic healthcare crowds out or crowds in similar services provided by the government in rural Uganda. We find that NGO entry reduces the number of government workers, which leads to a reduction in government-provided health services. The results are driven by the NGO often hiring the government worker in places where skilled labor is scarce. In places where skilled labor is relatively abundant, the NGO hires a second person and complements go…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Technological Adoption and Taxation: The Case of China’s Golden Tax Reform

  Tax Policy and the Economy · 2024-06-01 · 4 citations

  article

  This paper investigates the effect of Phase 2 of the Golden Tax Project on the value-added tax (VAT) in China. The reform introduced computer-generated invoices and electronic transaction linking. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we show that the reform increased VAT by reducing exaggerated VAT deductions. The introduction of the new digital technology had large positive effects on Chinese fiscal capacity. VAT gains from the reform explain approximately 13.7% of VAT growth during 1998…

  PublisherDOI

• Discrimination, Disenfranchisement and African American WWII Military Enlistment

  2020-07-15 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Nathan Nunn

  131 shared

• Murat Iyigun

  University of Colorado Boulder

  62 shared

• Xin Meng

  Xiamen University

  56 shared

• David Yanagizawa-Drott

  51 shared

• Tommaso Porzio

  37 shared

• Benjamin Moll

  35 shared

• David Lagakos

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  32 shared

• Todd Schoellman

  30 shared

Awards & honors

• The Conquest Award for Contributions to Holodomor Studies
• Fellow of the Econometric Society
• Alfred P. Sloan Fellow
• Northwestern Kellogg Best EMBA Core Course Teacher Award
• Association of Comparative Economics Studies, President

Similar researchers at Northwestern University

• Dean Karlanh-97
• Mark Finnh-95
• Torben Gustav Andersenh-85