I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University's Center on Contemporary China, housed in the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). I received my Ph.D. jointly in Political Science and Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in August 2026, and was previously a Predoctoral Visiting Scholar in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University.

I am a comparativist and political economist studying authoritarian regimes, with a focus on China. My research examines how authoritarian rule deepens, how citizens view it, and what consequences it has. My methodological interests span quantitative social science, from causal inference with observational and experimental data to formal theory and structural estimation.

Prior to Wisconsin, I received my MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics as a Lee Family Scholar and my Bachelor of Economics and Finance from the University of Hong Kong as an HKU Foundation Scholar. 

My name is pronounced /Ming-Tsong Pan/, and you can reach me via email at mingcong.pan@princeton.edu.