I am a Joint Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science and Agricultural & Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.  My advisors are Yoshiko Herrera (co-chair), Nadav Shelef (co-chair), Paul Castañeda Dower (co-chair), Rikhil Bhavnani, Junyan Jiang, and Yiqing Xu. 

I study the political economy of elite politics and public opinion in authoritarian regimes, with a regional focus on China. My first research agenda concerns how power is divided among political actors in authoritarian regimes and its impact on governance quality. My second research agenda is devoted to systematically quantifying political preferences under authoritarianism, overcoming issues such as preference falsification, and understanding their implications for stability and changes in authoritarian regimes.

Before coming to the University of 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

Authoritarian Backsliding: How Power Concentrates in Non-Democracies and Its Consequences.

Political Preferences in the Shadow of Authoritarian Backsliding. (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)