Kellee Tsai

Research Professor

Research Interests: Comparative politics, political economy of development, Chinese politics, international political economy

Education: PhD, Columbia University

A scholar of contemporary Chinese politics and economic development, Tsai’s research addresses broader debates in comparative politics, the political economy of development, and the study of informal institutions and endogenous institutional change. She has published four books, including Back-Alley Banking: Private Entrepreneurs in China (Cornell University Press, 2002), Rural Industrialization and Non-Governmental Finance in Wenzhou (co-authored in Chinese, 山西经济出版社 2004), Japan and China in the World Political Economy (co-edited with Saadia Pekannen, Routledge, 2005), and Capitalism without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China (Cornell University Press, 2007).  Her articles have appeared in journals such as China Journal, China Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, World Development, and World Politics. Her current research concerns state capitalism in China; and the political economy of remittances and ethnic foreign direct investment in China and India.

Nongyehua yu minjian jinrong: Wenzhou de jingyan [Rural industrialization and informal finance: Wenzhou's experience], co authored with Wang Xiaoyi and Li Renqing (Taiyuan: Shanxi jingji chubanshe, 2004) "Imperfect Substitutes: The Local Political Economy of Informal Finance and Microfinance in Rural China and India," World Development 32,9 (September 2004) "Off Balance: The Unintended Consequences of Fiscal Federalism in China," Journal of Chinese Political Science 9,2 (Fall 2004) "Segmented Markets: Grassroots Finance in Rural China and India," China Report: A Journal of East Asian Studies 39, 4 (November 2003): 511-535 "Locating the Local State in China," Politologiske Studier (September 2003); 71-82 "Chinese Factionalism from a New Institutional Perspective" in The Nature of Chinese Politics, From Mao to Jiang (2002)  (with Andrew J. Nathan) "State Ideology and Women in Rural China" in Women in Developing Countries: Assessing Strategies for Empowerment (2002) "Banquet Banking:  Gender and Rotating Savings and Credit Associations in South China," The China Quarterly (2000)