Job Market Paper

Leading by Words: Evidence from Frederick Douglass’s Oratory (with Letian Zhang).

This paper examines whether Black political voice can shift the behavior of a white-dominated electorate through Frederick Douglass’s nineteenth-century anti-slavery speaking tours. We assemble a new dataset of nearly 2,000 speeches linked to local outcomes and use difference-in-differences and complementary empirical strategies to identify the effects of local exposure to his speeches. Towns visited by Douglass subsequently saw marked declines in pro-slavery Democratic vote share and significantly higher Union Army enlistment rates. Textual analysis of local newspapers suggests that his speeches shifted the views of some moderate pro-slavery and neutral individuals while also reshaping the local media agenda and racial narrative, placing slavery at the center of discussion and amplifying anti-slavery voices. We also document spillovers across space and media coverage, and show that the quality and dissemination of speeches, together with the surrounding information environment, shaped the magnitude of these effects. The results highlight the role of charismatic leaders and media narratives in social and political change.

Journal Publications

• 欧阳鑫、汤珂、孙震， 金融市场与企业创新发展——基于专利价值折损缓解的新视角， 管理世界，2026年第1期，第71–83页。
• Ouyang, X., Sun, Z., Xiao, T., Zhao, Y., & Zheng, B. (2026). Gender-pairing differences in online second-hand transactions: evidence from a Chinese C2C platform. Applied Economics Letters, 1–5.
• Cheng, W., Ouyang, X., Yu, A., Shen, Z., & Vardanyan, M. (2024). Subjective perceptions versus objective outcomes: Assessing the impact of smart city pilots on environmental quality in China. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 209, 123799.
• Ouyang, X., Sun, Z., & Xu, X. (2022). Patent system in the digital era: Opportunities and new challenges. Journal of Digital Economy, 1(3), 166–179.
• Cheng, W., Wang, Q., Ouyang, X., Xie, Y., Gao, Y., & Yu, A. (2021). Effect of economic and technological development zones on green innovation: Learning by importing perspective. Journal of Global Information Management, 30(6), 1–18.

Selected Working Papers

• Xin Ouyang, Xuege Lu, Zhenyu Liao, Letian Zhang and Hongxing Yang, “Women’s Rise in Management: The Evolution of Managerial Archetypes,” Minor R&R at Strategic Management Journal.
• Xin Ouyang, Xuege Lu and Letian Zhang, “Labor-Market Outcomes of Feminist Activists,” R&R at Strategic Management Journal.
• Xin Ouyang*, Yunshu Ling, Zhen Sun and Richard Freeman, “Valuing China’s Patent Boom,” Working Paper.
• Yunshu Ling, Xin Ouyang*, Zhen Sun and Can Xu, “Pollution with(out) Borders: Decentralized versus Centralized Governance in Chaohu Lake,” Working Paper.
• Wenyin Cheng, Xin Ouyang*, Yiwei Wang, “From Words to Welfare: Bridging Policy Discourse and Human-Centered Outcomes in Smart City Pilots,” Working Paper.
• Xin Ouyang, Yixin Luo, Xie Yang and Zhen Sun, “Nature or Nurture? Evidence from Competition Outcomes of Chinese Swimmers,” Working Paper.
• Jinglei Huang, Xin Ouyang, Zhen Sun, Zhenglin Zhao and Di Zhou, “Data-Driven Innovation in Regional Innovation Ecosystems,” Working Paper.
• 欧阳鑫，孙震，杨云龙，魏文石， 技术创新、地区竞合与经济增长——基于知识流动的视角， 工作论文。

* Corresponding author.