*Last updated 14 November 2009. I am Assistant Professor of Political Science (tenure-track) at the University of Toronto, jointly appointed by the Department of Political Science and the Asian Institute. I was An Wang Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University in 2008-09. My theoretical interests are comparative political economy, politics of development, politics of finance & public finance, fiscal federalism. My regional interests are primarily China, followed by East and Southeast Asia. I am fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Malay, Fujianese, Fuzhou, and Cantonese. Currently, I am working on two projects. I am completing a book manuscript on the political economy of credit in rural China. It addresses the Communist Party's influence on the financial institutions, the varieties of rural industrialization, and central-local government relations in China. The book manuscript will be submitted to university presses for review in 2010. My other project deals with decentralization and the provision of public goods and services. It asks whether fiscal decentralization--without political liberalization that creates checks-and-balances on local government power--can improve public goods provision. The study compares China and Indonesia, both are large countries that have implemented a wide-range of economic decentralization policies but have divergent degree of political liberalization. Email: Lynette dot Ong at utoronto dot ca My vitae is available for download on this site, on the right-hand column.
Book Manuscript
Conference Papers & Presentations
Between Developmental and Clientelist States: Explaining Rural Industrialization in China, Association of Asian Studies (AAS) (2008)
Fiscal Federalism and Soft Budget Constraints: The Case of China, Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) (2006)
The Political Economy of the Rural Credit Cooperatives’ Institutional Design, Association of Asian Studies (AAS) (2006)
The Political Economy of the Rural Credit Cooperatives’ Institutional Design, Association of Chinese Political Science (ACPS) (2006)
The Nexus between Township Government Debt, Township Enterprises, and Rural Financial Institutions in China, International Conference on Asian Studies (ICAS) (2005)
Other Publications (selected)
Refereed Journal Articles
Rural Development Since 1978: Agricultural Banking, The Encyclopaedia of Modern China, Gale Modern China series, Cengage Learning (2009)
Rural Development Since 1978: Agricultural Policy, The Encyclopaedia of Modern China, Gale Modern China series, Cengage Learning (2009)
Communist Party and Financial Institutions: Institutional Design of China's Post-Reform Rural Credit Cooperatives, Pacific Affairs (2008)
The Political Economy of Township Government Debt, Township Enterprises, and Rural Financial Institutions in China, China Quarterly (2006)
Multiple Principals and Collective Action: China’s Rural Credit Cooperatives and Poor Households’ Access to Credit, Journal of East Asian Studies (2006)
Unpublished papers
Between Development and Clientelist States: Explaining Rural Industrialization in China, currently reviewed by a top political science journal. (2008)
Fiscal Federalism and Soft Budget Constraint: The Case of China, currently reviewed by a top political science journal. (2008)