I study how domestic political considerations influence the foreign policy choices of autocratic regimes, by analyzing the case of Chinese foreign aid. First, using contractor-level data, I find that the regime allocates foreign aid projects to help maintain political stability: aid projects are awarded to state-owned firms in Chinese prefectures hit by social unrest, increasing employment and political stability. Second, I show that this strategy to manage domestic unrest affects the global allocation of Chinese aid, since state-owned firms pursue projects in countries where they have prior connections. Finally, I document that foreign aid triggered by domestic unrest does not affect political instability in recipient countries on average. *Media coverage: Project Syndicate, US-China Today, VoxDev* [[pdf]](https://www.jorismueller.com/files/chinaaid_latest_draft.pdf/)
This project documents the rise of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on firms in China over the last decade. We propose novel quantitative measures of Party influence and present recent trends in those measures. We corroborate qualitative work and find a sharp increase in Party influence since 2017. Furthermore, we find that influence has been concentrated in state-owned firms. Domestic private and foreign firms exhibit much lower overall levels of influence, most of which is rhetorical. [[pdf]](https://www.jorismueller.com/files/The_Party_and_the_Firm.pdf/)
This paper provides evidence of the long-run effects of a permanent increase in agricultural productivity on conflict. We construct a newly digitized and geo-referenced dataset of battles in Europe, the Near East, and North Africa from 1400–1900 CE and examine variation in agricultural productivity due to the introduction of potatoes from the Americas to the Old World after the Columbian Exchange. We find that the introduction of potatoes led to a sizeable and permanent reduction in conflict. *Media coverage: marginalrevolution.com* [[pdf]](https://www.jorismueller.com/files/Agricultural_productivity_conflict_latest_draft.pdf/)