【量化历史网上讲座系列】(Quantitative History Webinar Series)由香港大学陈志武教授和马驰骋博士联合发起并举办，旨在介绍前沿量化历史研究成果、促进同仁交流，推广量化方法在历史研究中的应用。本系列讲座由国际量化历史学会、香港大学经济管理学院和亚洲环球研究所全力支持和承办。

Lineage as Risk-Sharing Institution: How Confucianism Contributed to Population Growth in Pre-Industrial China

主讲人: Chicheng Ma（马驰骋）, Assistant Professor of Economics, HKU Business School

时间：2021年5月20日 16:00 – 17:30 （北京时间，星期四）

讲座语言：英文

注册链接及二维码：

https://hku.zoom.com.cn/webinar/register/8116207889005/WN_JkwqlSEwQoCB9sGcw32AYA

【本系列召集人陈志武教授与马驰骋教授首次发表其最新研究结果，欢迎注册参加！】

Chicheng Ma will present his recent co-authored paper with Zhiwu Chen: “Lineage as Risk-Sharing Institution: How Confucianism Contributed to Population Growth in Pre-Industrial China”. They claim that besides technology and resource expansion, improvements in risk-mitigation pushed the Malthusian limits to population growth in pre-industrial societies. This hypothesis is tested in the context of China whose population grew by 11 times, while cultivated land and productivity did not increase commensurately, during 1000-1850 CE.

In traditional China, the Confucian clan (the lineage) acted as an internal risk-sharing institution, protecting members against the various Malthusian checks. For their empirical exercise, Chen and Ma employ data from 269 prefectures over the period 976-1850 CE, measure each region’s clan strength by the number of genealogy books, and instrument the distribution of clan strength using the geographic distance from the Zhu Xi’s Confucian academies (书院)―fountainheads of the Confucian clan culture.

Their analysis shows that prefectures with stronger clans (hence better risk mitigation) had substantially higher population density during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Both population loss from natural disasters and premature deaths of sons were significantly lower in prefectures with stronger clans, due to the clan-provided charity and risk-sharing services. In this Quantitative History Webinar, Chicheng Ma will explain how the Confucian clan allowed China to sustain explosive population growth even before modern technologies came.

“量化历史研究”公众号由陈志武（香港大学冯氏基金讲席教授、原耶鲁大学教授）和龙登高（清华大学教授）及其团队——林展（中国人民大学）、熊金武（中国政法大学）、何石军（武汉大学）、蒋勤（上海交通大学）、彭雪梅（中山大学）等人负责。向学界和业界朋友，定期推送量化历史研究经典、前沿文献。同时作为“量化历史讲习班”信息交流平台。喜欢我们的朋友请搜寻公众号：QuantitativeHistory，或扫描下面二维码关注。

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