His main work is about how rent-seeking and politics affect resource allocation and efficiency. He has studied a range of prominent social, economic and political phenomena in China, including privatization, business groups, workplace safety, Sino-Japanese conflict, fellow selection at the China Academy of Science, air pollution and insurance industry, and migration and the Sent-down Youth program during the Cultural Revolution. He has published in leading economics, finance, Strategy, and Accounting journals, including the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, the American Economic Journal: Applied, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Administrative Science Quarterly, the Management Science, and the Journal of Accounting and Economics.