- PhD 2013, IIES, Stockholm University
Ruixue Jia is a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Hong Kong. She serves as co-editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics, co-director of the China Data Lab, and co-chair of the China Economic Summer Institute (CESI). Her research lies at the intersection of economics, history, and politics, examining how power structures evolve and shape economic development. Her recent work has focused on the political economy of idea formation and diffusion, with attention to the interplay among the state, education, science, and technology. Jia is affiliated with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), CESifo, and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). She is coauthor of The Highest Exam, a book on how China’s education system affects and reflects society.
- Political Economy
- Economic History
- Education
- Labor Economics
- Ruixue Jia, Hongbin Li and Claire Cousineau. 2025. The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. The Economist’s Best Book of 2025
- Yuchen Guo, Ruixue Jia and Matthew O. Jackson. “Peer Influence on West Point Cadets’ Civil War Allegiances.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2026. 123, no. 22
- Jia, Ruixue, Gerard Roland and Yang Xie. 2024. “A Theory of Power Structure and Institutional Compatibility: China vs. Europe Revisited.” Journal of the European Economic Association, Vol. 22(3): 1275–1318.
- Bai, Ying, Ruixue Jia and Jiaojiao Yang. 2023. “Web of Power: How Elite Networks Shaped War and Politics in China.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 138(2): 1067-1108.
- Greenstone, Michael, Guojun He, Ruixue Jia and Tong Liu. 2022. “Can Technology Solve the Principal-Agent Problem? Evidence from China’s War on Air Pollution.” American Economic Review: Insights, vol. 4(1): 54-70.
- Jia, Ruixue and Hongbin Li. 2021. “Just Above the Exam Cutoff Score: Elite College Admission and Wages in China.” Journal of Public Economics, vol. 196
- Jia, Ruixue and Torsten Persson. 2021. “Choosing Ethnicity: The Interplay between Individual and Social Motives.” Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 19 (2): 1203-1248.
- Bai, Ying and Ruixue Jia. 2016. “Elite Recruitment and Political Stability: The Impact of the Abolition of China’s Civil Service Exam.” Econometrica, vol. 84 (2), 677–733
- Jia, Ruixue, Masa Kudamatsu and David Seim. 2015. “Political Selection in China: Complementary Roles of Connections and Performance.” Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 13 (4), 631-668.
- Jia, Ruixue 2014. “The Legacies of Forced Freedom: China’s Treaty Ports.” Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 96 (4), 596-608.