Replication Data for State Formation and Bureaucratization in Pre-Imperial China

This is the replication package for a study on military conflicts and state-building in pre-imperial China, to be published in the Journal of Economic History. The dataset supports an incomplete contract model examining rulers' and local administrators' incentives during defensive and offensive wars.

Use Cases

• Replicate empirical tests for the relationship between military conflicts and state-building using the provided model and data.
• Analyze historical case data to test model predictions on decentralization during defensive wars and centralization during offensive wars.
• Examine the broader implications for political divergence between China and Europe using the study's analytical framework.

Strengths

• Replication package for a peer-reviewed study accepted by the Journal of Economic History.
• Dataset is associated with a formal economic model examining incentives in state formation.

Limitations

• The specific data structure, column names, and row counts are not described in the input.
• The dataset's scope is limited to the historical context of pre-imperial China.

Provenance

Source

Joy Chen, ICPSR Harvested Dataverse.

Collection Method

Created as a replication package for an academic paper.

Time Range

Pre-imperial China.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-02-23.

Geography

China.