** **Review of Economics and Statistics (conditionally accepted)** ** I study how domestic political considerations influence the foreign policy choices of autocratic regimes, by analyzing China's foreign aid. First, using contractor-level data, I find that the regime allocates foreign aid projects to help maintain political stability: aid projects are awarded to state-owned firms in Chinese prefectures hit by social unrest, increasing employment and political stability. Second, I show that this strategy to manage domestic unrest affects the global allocation of Chinese aid, since state-owned firms pursue projects in countries where they have prior connections. Finally, I document that foreign aid triggered by domestic unrest does not affect political instability in recipient countries on average. *Media coverage: Project Syndicate, US-China Today, VoxDev* *[[AidData working paper]](https://docs.aiddata.org/ad4/pdfs/WPS133_The_Domestic_Political_Economy_of_Chinas_Foreign_Aid.pdf)* [[latest version pdf]](https://www.jorismueller.com/files/chinaaid_latest_draft.pdf/)
** **Review of Economic Studies (forthcoming)** ** Diversity can pose fundamental challenges to state building and development. The Tanzanian Ujamaa policy — one of post-colonial Africa’s largest state-building experiments — addressed these challenges by resettling a diverse population in planned villages, where children received political education. We combine differences in exposure to Ujamaa across space and age to identify long-term impacts of the policy. Analysis of contemporary surveys shows persistent, positive effects on national identity and perceived state legitimacy. Our preferred interpretation, supported by evidence that considers alternative hypotheses, is that changes to educational content drive our results. Our findings also point to trade-offs associated with state building: while the policy contributed to establishing the new state as a legitimate central authority, exposure to Ujamaa lowered demands for democratic accountability and did not increase generalized inter-ethnic trust. *[[ReStud forthcoming version]](https://academic.oup.com/restud/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/restud/rdae116/7929608)* *[[NBER working paper]](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30731/w30731.pdf/)* [[pdf]](https://www.jorismueller.com/files/statebuilding_Ujamaa_latest_draft.pdf/)
This project documents the rise of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on firms in China over the last decade. We propose novel quantitative measures of Party influence and present recent trends in those measures. We corroborate qualitative work and find a sharp increase in Party influence since 2017. Furthermore, we find that influence has been concentrated in state-owned firms. Domestic private and foreign firms exhibit much lower overall levels of influence, most of which is rhetorical. [[pdf]](https://www.jorismueller.com/files/The_Party_and_the_Firm.pdf/)
We exploit the staggered introduction of 3G mobile internet in Africa to examine the effect of new communication technologies on the spread of political unrest in and across countries. We design a novel empirical strategy that allows us to separate the direct effect of mobile internet on unrest from spillovers. We find that digital communication networks lead to the spread of unrest independent of physical distance. Preliminary evidence suggests that social media constitute an important channel.