Junxi Liu

I am a PhD student in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick. I obtained my Bachelor's degree from Peking University in 2021. I work on political economy and innovation in both historical and contemporary settings. Using machine learning and language models, I build novel datasets and measures from unstructured archival and modern records to study the gains from empire, the diffusion of innovation, and firms' responses to external pressures.

I am on the 2026/27 academic job market.

Research Interests: Political Economy, Innovation, Economic History

Job Market Paper

Battles and Spoils: Evidence from the British Museum

Abstract: States rely on agents to fight their wars yet often pay them little. I ask whether battles systematically generated spoils and whether military officers benefited from them in the context of the British Empire. First, using novel British Museum catalog data and the battles that British forces fought between 1816 and 1913, I find that the British Museum acquired more artifacts from a battle's location in the year after the battle, and that acquisitions stayed higher for decades. These spoils arose from new access to a place's wealth and from direct taking on the field. The increase followed British victories, was larger in places Britain never ruled, and was stronger for artifacts the British Museum acknowledges as taken in war. Spoils were also turned into cash through prize sales and kept appearing in auction houses for decades. Second, battles generated private gains for military officers. I link manually collected biographies of battle commanders to their wealth at death. Commanders of the battles that were followed by larger inflows of artifacts to the British Museum left higher probated wealth, controlling for pre-battle rank, personal characteristics, and family background. After the Indian Mutiny, a war rich in spoils, officers purchased more commissions in the regiments that had served in the campaign. Together, the results show that imperial warfare generated spoils on a large scale, and that the gains reached not only the state but also the officers who carried it out.

Working Papers

• Appropriate Entrepreneurship? The Rise of China and the Developing World, with Josh Lerner, Jacob Moscona, and David Y. Yang
  Accepted, Journal of Political Economy
  [Abstract]

  Global innovation and entrepreneurship have traditionally been dominated by a handful of high-income countries, especially the US. This paper investigates the international consequences of the rise of a new hub for innovation, focusing on the dramatic ascent of high-potential entrepreneurship and venture capital in China. First, using comprehensive global data, we show that as the Chinese venture industry rose in importance in certain sectors, entrepreneurship increased substantially in other emerging markets. Using a broad set of country-level economic indicators, we find that this effect was driven by country-sector pairs most similar to their counterparts in China. The estimates are similar when exploiting Chinese sector-specific policies that affected the likelihood of entrepreneurship. Second, turning to mechanisms, we show that the baseline findings are driven by local investors and by new firms that more closely resemble existing Chinese companies. Third, we find that this growth in emerging market investment had wide-ranging economic consequences, including a rise in serial entrepreneurship, cross-sector spillovers, innovation, and broader measures of socioeconomic well-being. Together, our findings suggest that many developing countries benefited from the more “appropriate” businesses and technology that resulted from the rise of an innovation hub in an emerging economy.

• The Indian Innovation Puzzle, with Namrata Kala and Josh Lerner
  [Abstract]

  Despite recent increases in some measures of innovation, India continues to have very modest levels of domestic patenting, contradicting standard views of the importance of property rights in economic development. Using a novel, newly constructed dataset of Indian patent grants, we explore why Indian patenting has been so low. We examine whether an absence of non-patented innovation, differences in industry composition and public attitudes, and a lack of public market reactions to patent awards can explain these differences, and find only modest support for these explanations. We then show evidence of an institutional quality mechanism, i.e., long delays in patent examination. We estimate the causal effects of reduced delays using a natural experiment. Specifically, we exploit IP India's unique office structure—the presence of four offices with distinct geographic coverage—and a 2016 reform that reallocated applications across offices. The policy shift increased examination speeds for technology-office pairs that gained access to more same-field examiner capacity. In response, the mixture of applicants shifted away from filers with low success rates and towards high-quality ones. This improved institutional capacity also enhanced other innovation outcomes, boosting the financing of venture capital-backed firms. But the magnitude of these effects was modest, closing just over one-tenth the patenting gap between India and other leading nations. This modest effect may reflect the implementation of the reform (a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that high-quality patenting could have been increased by an additional 11 to 33 percent), as well as the uncertainty surrounding patent litigation. These results underscore the importance of institutional quality in facilitating innovation.

• Colonialism, Political Risk, and Firm Performance: Evidence from India, with James Fenske and Bishnupriya Gupta
  [Abstract]

  Did political risk constrain foreign investment under colonial rule? We compare British and Indian firms in interwar India using novel panel data. Although risk increased for British firms, we find little evidence of capital withdrawal. Financial outcomes differed mainly across industries, while board Indianization and cross-group interlocks increased only gradually and unevenly. British managing agents likewise remained concentrated in familiar sectors, accommodating Indian participation without substantial diversification. Rather than withdrawing uniformly, British firms added Indian directors where local capital, market knowledge, and commercial connections became valuable, while remaining concentrated in industries supported by established expertise and commercial networks.

• Scientists, Sanctions, and Spillovers, with James Fenske, Muhammad Haseeb, and Namrata Kala
  [Abstract]

  Whether targeted sanctions remain targeted depends on their spillovers. We study the 1998 US sanctions imposed on selected Indian scientific institutions after India’s nuclear tests. Using an event-study design, we find large and persistent effects on both sanctioned institutions and their pre-1998 collaborators. After a decade, scientific output was more than 40% lower relative to the estimated no-sanctions counterfactual. Research impact and nuclear-related work also declined, while affected institutions attracted fewer new scientists and collaborated with fewer other institutions. The results show that sanctions can propagate through scientific networks, generating substantial indirect costs.

• Proposing and Voting: A Supply-Demand Framework for Corporate Democracy, with Shaoting Pi and Ao Wang
  [Abstract]

  This paper studies how changes in voter demand reshape the supply of proposals placed on the ballot. We examine ESG shareholder proposals and show that rising support for ESG issues does not mechanically imply more aggressive proposals. Instead, when sponsors face costs and view proposal types as substitutes, improved support for low-cost proposal types can induce a shift away from high-cost proposal types. Shareholder support for environmental and social (ES) proposals increased by more than 50% between 2010 and 2020, yet the content of such proposals can vary substantially. We first document that there has been a large retreat in big-ask proposals (e.g., demanding operational changes for firms). The big-ask proposals fell from about 40% of ES ballots to roughly 5%, being replaced by small-ask proposals (e.g., requesting additional disclosure), and the increase in overall support rate is driven by favorable votes on small asks compared to big asks. However, we caution against interpreting these trends as greenwashing. Investigating both sides of shareholder democracy (proponents and voters), we develop and estimate a structural model in which ES proponents choose a portfolio of proposal types, anticipating vote outcomes. The model captures a feedback: changes in voting reshape the mix of sponsored proposals, and that mix, in turn, shapes observed support rates. Counterfactuals based on resubmission-style benchmarks suggest that the early part of the decade featured an oversupply of big-ask proposals and a moderate undersupply of small-ask proposals; the subsequent decline in big asks reflects an equilibrium correction toward small asks that are expected to receive meaningful support to generate incremental progress in ES. Therefore, the correction, along with growing voter support, suggests a shift towards a more pragmatic approach to ES issues rather than greenwashing.

Work in Progress

• Manufacturing Hubs and Innovation: Evidence from China
• Masterpieces in Paris: Napoleon's Looted Art and Innovation in French Painting, with Litianqi Fan

Teaching

Department Teaching Excellence Award (feedback > 4.5), University of Warwick, 2022 Fall, 2023 Spring, 2023 Fall, 2024 Fall, 2025 Spring

• EC104 The World Economy: History & Theory, Seminar Tutor, University of Warwick, 2023 Fall, 2024 Spring, 2024 Fall, 2025 Spring
• Warwick Summer School: International Business and Finance, Seminar Tutor, University of Warwick, 2023 Summer, 2024 Summer
• EC334 Topics in Financial Economics, Seminar Tutor, University of Warwick, 2023 Spring, 2024 Spring
• EC202 Microeconomics 2, Seminar Tutor, University of Warwick, 2022 Fall
• Financial Economics, Teaching Assistant, Peking University, 2021 Spring
• Government and Market in Historical Perspectives, Teaching Assistant, Peking University, 2019 Fall