This dissertation presents three essays covering development issues in historical China, under the umbrella of the origins of gender norms, preferences, and long-term economic development. The first essay concerns the origins of gender norms, focusing on China’s long-lasting practice – foot-binding. In particular, this essay presents a unified theory explaining the regional, temporal and class variation about foot-binding, motivated by both marriage market and labor incentives. Further, the theoretical predictions are tested using county-level Republican archival data. The second essay investigates the effects of political conflict on long-run development dynamics, by tracing out the development trajectories of the affected regions/cohorts of the Cultural Revolution. By construc...[ Read more ]

This dissertation presents three essays covering development issues in historical China, under the umbrella of the origins of gender norms, preferences, and long-term economic development. The first essay concerns the origins of gender norms, focusing on China’s long-lasting practice – foot-binding. In particular, this essay presents a unified theory explaining the regional, temporal and class variation about foot-binding, motivated by both marriage market and labor incentives. Further, the theoretical predictions are tested using county-level Republican archival data. The second essay investigates the effects of political conflict on long-run development dynamics, by tracing out the development trajectories of the affected regions/cohorts of the Cultural Revolution. By constructing a county-level panel of industrialization (1953-2000), we show that while worse-affected counties performed similarly during the pre-revolution periods, they were slower to industrialize afterwards with a partial rebound from the shock. The third essay examines how political movement can affect individual trust formation, using the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) as a shock. Employing both regional and temporal variation in the exposure to the revolution, the results show that individuals from counties of higher revolution intensity and schooling cohort during the revolution trust significantly less.