I am a Joint Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science and Agricultural & Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. 

I am a comparative political economist and applied methodologist with a focus on China. My recent research centers on elite politics and public opinion in authoritarian settings. One agenda examines how power is divided among political actors in authoritarian regimes and its consequences for governance quality. Another investigates the systematic measurement of political preferences under authoritarianism — addressing challenges such as preference falsification — and their implications for regime stability and changes.

My methodological toolkit spans quantitative social science broadly — from causal inference and quasi-experimental designs to structural modeling and formal theory. Each project is thus guided by the demands of the question and the nature of available data.

Before Wisconsin, I received my MSc in economics from the London School of Economics and my  BA  in economics and finance from the University of Hong Kong.  In  AY 2023-24, I was a predoctoral visiting scholar in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University.

My name is pronounced /Ming-Tsong Pan/. You can find my CV here.

Working Papers

Personalization and Its Governance Consequences in Authoritarian Regimes.

Political Preferences amid Weakening Institutional Constraints under Authoritarianism. (with Shane Xuan and Yiqing Xu)

Swing with the State: Preference Falsification and Public Support for Policies under Authoritarianism. (with Marshall Mo and Yiqing Xu)

*Drafts available upon request.