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This dissertation consists of three integrated paperswhich apply a new institutional economics (NIE) perspective tounderstand firm and government choices in contemporary China. Usinga fixed effects regression model and a dataset I constructed basedon twelve years of data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics,the first paper explores the impact of government discretion uponthe formation of domestic private enterprises. The main finding isthat as the share of provincial government revenue deriving fromdiscretionary fees increases, the stock of firms in the provincedecreases. Investigating data from an existing World Bank survey of12,400 Chinese industrial firms, the second paper interacts ameasure of property rights security with proxy variables indicatingthe firm’s level of sunk costs. The finding that new fixed assetinvestment by firms with high sunk costs is systematically moreresponsive to property rights than that of firms with low sunkcosts suggests an important and previously unidentified mechanismby which institutional quality can affect economic performance.Finally, the third paper investigates whether the oft-observedassociation between citizen access to information and governmentresponsiveness obtains in an authoritarian setting. Using NationalBureau of Statistics data, I posit a collective action mechanism toaccount for the finding that increasing diffusion of informationand communication technologies (ICTs) is associated with acomposition of government spending that is more responsive tocitizen preferences. In sum, the dissertation is an empiricalcontribution to the study of how institutions and access toinformation affect the behaviour of firms and governments incontemporary China. Beyond estimating the magnitude of theseeffects, each paper makes a theoretical contribution to ourunderstanding of how institutions matter for development. Thedissertation’s broad conclusion is that China’s developmentexperience supports the conventional wisdom of an NIE perspectiveon development.

Contemporary China Through a New Institutionalist Lens: Three Empirical Studies of Firm Behaviour and Government Responsiveness