Taisu Zhang ’08 Awarded Gaddis Smith International Book Prize

Associate Professor of Law Taisu Zhang ’08 has been awarded the Gaddis Smith International Book Prize for best first book by Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale.

Zhang’s book, The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Preindustrial China and England (Cambridge University Press) offers a novel argument as to why Chinese and English pre-industrial economic development went down different paths. The dominance of Neo-Confucian social hierarchies in Late Imperial and Republican China allowed many poor but senior individuals to possess status and political authority highly disproportionate to their wealth. In comparison, landed wealth was a fairly strict prerequisite for high status and authority in the far more ‘individualist’ society of early modern England, essentially excluding low-income individuals from secular positions of prestige and leadership. Zhang argues that this social difference had major consequences for property institutions and agricultural production.

Established in 2004 to recognize the distinguished legacy of one of the former directors of the MacMillan Center, the prize is awarded to a first book on international topics written by a current Yale faculty member. Award recipients receive a research appointment at the MacMillan Center and a $10,000 research award over two years.