My primary field of research is the economic and environmental history of modern China, with a particular focus on the institutions of long-distance trade and plantation forestry. My book manuscript, Sustaining the Market: Long-Distance Timber Trade in China, 1700-1930, examines the inter-regional trade system that connected the Lower Yangzi economic core areas to timber supplies of the southwestern frontier. I analyze the evolution of state-merchant relations, the impacts of empire expansion, property rights regimes that enabled reforestation, and enforcement mechanisms that served the spread of long-distance trade networks.