What happened when China randomly assigned people to farm rice or wheat
The rice theory argues that the irrigation and high labor demands of rice farming gave southern China a more interdependent culture than the wheat-farming north. But how can we test whether rice really shapes culture? Two state farms started in the 1950s give us a rare natural experiment.
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Thanks to my co-authors Xindong Wei, Kaili Zhang, and Fengyan Wang.
Thanks to Xiawei Dong, without whom this study would not have happened!
Thanks to@Danila Medvedev for helpful edits on the draft of the paper.
You can read the full text of the paper (for free) here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44770-w