Jaya Y. Wen

Jaya Wen is an Assistant Professor in the Business, Government, and the International Economy (BGIE) Unit at Harvard Business School. Her research sits at the intersection of political economy and development economics, and much of her work studies Asian economics, with a particular emphasis on China. She examines how autocracies use economic policies to manage internal and external threats and how firms operating in autocratic contexts adapt to these pressures.

Her China-focused projects show how state-owned enterprises are deployed to reduce unrest, how Communist Party influence in firms expands in response to labor disputes and accidents, and how industrial subsidies are used to buffer firms against geopolitical shocks. She also studies how China adapts to international sanctions and trade restrictions — from the effects of VAT computerization on tax enforcement, to firm-level responses to U.S. tariffs and export controls. Beyond China, she investigates how economic incentives shape violence, including ethnic conflict in Myanmar and refugee host backlash in Bangladesh. Methodologically, she combines econometric analysis with innovative data sources such as scraped online text and geospatial imaging to establish causal relationships in politically sensitive and low-data environments.

At HBS, she teaches the required BGIE course and has authored cases on the Asian Financial Crisis and on agricultural policy and political mobilization in Thailand. Beyond HBS, she is affiliated with the Center for International Development and the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Business and Government, and she actively contributes to the economics and political economy research communities.

She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.

Research Interests: State-owned enterprises, autocratic states, China’s economic policy