Rice, State Capacity, and Economic Transformation in China Yuhua Wang∗ July 17, 2015 Abstract I propose an agricultural theory of economic transformation that rice cultivation is conducive to market reform. Using sub-national data from China, I show that market reform is more successful in rice than in wheat regions after controlling for income, policy, geography, and interest groups, and that the effect of rice is as important as geography. Exploiting a geographic regression discontinuity design based on China’s Qin Mountains-Huai River line, I show that rice has a causal effect on reform outcome. Causal mediation analysis and historical evidence demonstrate that rice cultivation contributes to a market economy through strong state fiscal capacity, rather than through culture or public support, because it necessitates large water- control projects that require a strong state. The agricultural theory pushes back the causal chain to find a structurally deeper cause of reform outcomes in the developing world. Caution should be exercised when generalizing the theory outside Asia. Word Count: 11,068 ∗Yuhua Wang is assistant professor of Government at Harvard University (
[email protected]. edu). I would like to thank Thomas Talhelm for sharing the provincial-level rice data, Elizabeth Perry, Margaret Pearson, Avery Goldstein, Marc Meredith, Guy Grossman, Alex Weisiger, Sarah Bush, Matt Levendusky, Julia Gray, Luke Keele, Jean Hong, and participants at seminars or workshops at Harvard, Princeton, and Penn for comments, and Jizhe Yang for providing excellent research assistance. All errors remain my own. 1 One of the most dramatic political events in the last three decades is the collapse of communism and the transition to market economies in the post-communist world.