Welcome. I am a joint PhD student in both the Department of Political Science and the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I work on the intersection of political economy, comparative politics, and development economics. Specifically, I am a political economist and an identity scholar, which means I am interested in how people make decisions leading to different behavior, and what shapes their preferences in the first place. One of my current research lines dwells on the role of formal and informal institutions, how they form and change, and shape economic and political outcomes. Another interrelated line studies the power of nonmaterial factors in political life, notably identity and ideology.

You can reach me via email: mingcong.pan@wisc.edu.