Scholars contend that in a weak institutional context, firms enter the political marketplace primarily through bribery or entrepreneurs running for public office. My dissertation challenges this conventional understanding by arguing that revolving-door channels have become a prevalent means of rent-seeking when within-government career opportunities are rare for public officials and the private sector is profitable. This dissertation proposes a theoretical framework for understanding the emergence of revolving-door officials in authoritarian regimes and tests this framework through a rigorous inquiry of firms in China. The three papers that constitute this work analyze the pattern, formation, and economic outcome of hiring revolving-door officials. I show the distortionary impact of post-government career concerns on public resource allocation, a mixed revolving-door recruitment strategy adopted by firms seeking both political power and regulatory expertise, and the salient signaling effect of revolving-door connections on financial investors.

Media Coverage: Financial Times, CNBC.

Chinese Revolving-Door Officials Database

The Chinese Revolving-Door Officials Database contains extensive demographic and career information of over 15,000 government officials who serve on the board of all Chinese publicly listed firms since the 2000s. The database is consist of three parts:

• compensation information for revolving-door officials, including salary, allowance, and stock shares;
• standardized career experience information;
• visualization of their political network.

The database is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (administered by American Political Science Association), the Department of Political Science at Duke University and Duke Asian Pacific Studies Institute.

Chinese Public-Private Partnership Database

The Chinese Public-Private Partnership Database provides detailed information of all Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects contracted by various levels of governments in China from 2013. The database includes:

• contract details of public-private partnership projects
• visualization of public-private partnership networks