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
• Transport engineering
• Economic system

Selected publications

• Repression

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Repression

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2026-03-01

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  We develop a conceptual framework of political repression.To motivate why states repress, we introduce the notion of the political project.The proposed framework is used to interpret two known stylized facts: 1) repression is higher in autocracies; and 2) repression has declined since the 1990s.We discuss under-researched aspects of political repression such as migration restrictions, the targeting of repression, and backlash.We conclude by bringing attention to the two main challenges for research on repression: 1) conceptualizing whether a given episode of repression is successful, and 2) the inherent selection problem in empirical measures of repression.

  PublisherDOI

• Economics and Politics in Taiwan

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2026-05-04

  datasetSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Economics and Politics in Taiwan

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2026-05-04

  datasetSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Abhijit Banerjee (1961–)

  2025-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Racial Discrimination and the Social Contract: Evidence from U.S. Army Enlistment During WWII

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2025-05-21 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This paper documents that the Pearl Harbor attack triggered a sharp increase in volunteer enlistment rates of American men, the magnitude of the increase was smaller for Black men than for White men and the Black–White gap was larger in counties with higher levels of racial discrimination. The results suggest that political exclusion and discrimination can undermine support for the government during critical times such as war.

  PublisherDOI

• The Intensifying Effects of Prolonged Climate Change on Conflict, 1400–1900 CE

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2024-05-01

  articleSenior author

  This study uses historical conflict and weather data for the period 1400-1900 CE to investigate the long-run effects of climate change on political instability in a context that suffered extensive cooling. The results show that temperature changes have little effect on conflict if they are isolated events but that consecutive periods of cooling are associated with increased conflict. This is consistent with the conventional wisdom that societies and economies are able to adapt to a certain amount of environmental change. But if climate change is prolonged, then the disruptions they cause can cumulate and lead to political instability.

  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 government healthcare.Thus, the effects of NGO entry on government capacity are nuanced.

  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 1998–2007.

  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act on the Economic Development of the Western U.S

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

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