The Chinese Exclusion Act and U.S. Economic Development | Economics, Applied | Steven Davis and Nancy Qian | Hoover Institution

Many Chinese nationals migrated to the western United States after 1840 to work in mining, railway construction, manufacturing, and personal services. By 1880, they made up 18 percent of the workforce in the western United States. That led to strong social and political backlash among whites, rooted partly in concerns about jobs and wages. Congress responded with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned the immigration of Chinese and shut the door to naturalization for Chinese already living in the U.S. The conversation in today’s episode focuses on two questions: First, how did the Chinese Exclusion Act affect economic development in the Western United States? Second, how did it affect white workers?

Recorded on January 9, 2024.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Nancy Qian is an empirical economist who studies economic development, political economy and economic history, with attention to the interplay between economics, geogrpahy, demographics, politics and culture. She co-directs the Global Poverty Research Lab at Northwestern University and founded the independent China Econ Lab.

Steven Davis is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the Hoover Institution, and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). He is a research associate of the NBER, IZA research fellow, elected fellow of the Society of Labor Economists, and consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He co-founded the Economic Policy Uncertainty project, the U.S. Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, the Global Survey of Working Arrangements, the Survey of Business Uncertainty, and the Stock Market Jumps project. He also co-organizes the Asian Monetary Policy Forum, held annually in Singapore. Before joining Hoover, Davis was on the faculty at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, serving as both distinguished service professor and deputy dean of the faculty.

RELATED RESOURCES:

• The Long-run Impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act, working paper, September 2024.
• Immigrants and the Making of America, Review of Economic Studies, 2020.

FOLLOW OUR GUEST ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

• Nancy Qian on: Project Syndicate
• Nancy Qian's website: nancyqian.org

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