Junxi Liu

Research

Job Market Paper

Battles and Spoils: Evidence from the British Museum

Abstract: States rely on agents to fight their wars yet often pay them little. I ask whether battles systematically generated spoils and whether military officers benefited from them in the context of the British Empire. First, using novel British Museum catalog data and the battles that British forces fought between 1816 and 1913, I find that the British Museum acquired more artifacts from a battle's location in the year after the battle, and that acquisitions stayed higher for decades. These spoils arose from new access to a place's wealth and from direct taking on the field. The increase followed British victories, was larger in places Britain never ruled, and was stronger for artifacts the British Museum acknowledges as taken in war. Spoils were also turned into cash through prize sales and kept appearing in auction houses for decades. Second, battles generated private gains for military officers. I link manually collected biographies of battle commanders to their wealth at death. Commanders of the battles that were followed by larger inflows of artifacts to the British Museum left higher probated wealth, controlling for pre-battle rank, personal characteristics, and family background. After the Indian Mutiny, a war rich in spoils, officers purchased more commissions in the regiments that had served in the campaign. Together, the results show that imperial warfare generated spoils on a large scale, and that the gains reached not only the state but also the officers who carried it out.

Working Papers

Appropriate Entrepreneurship? The Rise of China and the Developing WorldLink opens in a new window, with Josh Lerner, Jacob Moscona, and David Y. Yang. Conditionally Accepted, Journal of Political Economy [Last Updated: July 2026]

The Indian Innovation Puzzle, with Namrata Kala and Josh Lerner

Colonialism, Political Risk, and Firm Performance: Evidence from India, with James Fenske and Bishnupriya Gupta

Scientists, Sanctions, and Spillovers, with James Fenske, Muhammad Haseeb, and Namrata Kala

Proposing and Voting: A Supply-Demand Framework for Corporate Democracy, with Shaoting Pi and Ao Wang

Work in Progress

Manufacturing Hubs and Innovation: Evidence from China

Masterpieces in Paris: Napoleon's Looted Art and Innovation in French Painting, with Litianqi Fan

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Teaching