Dr. Yue Hou is an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also affiliated with Penn’s Center for the Study of Contemporary China and Penn Identity and Conflict Lab. Her research interests include political economy and authoritarian politics, with a regional focus on China. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Journal of Experimental Political Science, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Journal of Comparative Economics, and China Leadership Monitor, and has been featured in the New York Times, the Economist, and Boston Review.

Her first book, the Private Sector in Public Office: Selective Property Rights in China (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2019), addresses the long-standing puzzle of how China’s private sector manages to grow without secure property rights. She also writes articles for Chinese media outlets including the Southern Weekly and Tencent press. She received her PhD in Political Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and BA in Economics and Mathematics from Grinnell College.