• “German Jews and the German-speaking Civic Culture of Nineteenth-century America.” In American Jewry: Transcending the European Experience? edited by Christian Wiese and Cornelia Wilhelm, 105–24. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

• Eva Hofmann Gundlach, Letters and Poems, 1849–1874: From Bavaria to Early San Francisco—A Story of Love and Opportunity, compiled by Lee Sims  and translated by Hannah Shield and Kathleen N. Conzen. El Granada, CA: Del Oro Publishing, 2016.

• “Before the Chicago School: Vernacular Assimilation Theory in Later 19th Century Immigrant Chicago.” In Global Cities—Metropolitan Cultures: A Transatlantic Perspective, edited by Barbara Hahn and Meike Zwingenberger, 101–12. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011.

• “Reshaping the Nation: Federal Employment, Civil Service Reform, and the Turners of Washington, D.C.” In Adolf Cluss und die Turnbewegung: Vom Heilbronner Turnfest 1846 ins amerikanische Exil, edited by Lothar Wieser and Peter Wanner, 79–84. Heilbronn: Stadtarchiv Heilbronn, 2007.

• “Die Residenzler: German Americans in the Making of the Nation's Capital.” In Adolf Cluss, Architect: From Germany to America, edited by Alan Lessoff and Christof Mauch, 55–67. Washington, D.C.: Historical Society of Washington, D.C. and Heilbronn: Stadtarchiv Heilbronn, 2005.

• "Immigrant Religion and the Public Sphere: The German Catholic Milieu in America." In German-American Immigration and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective, edited by Wolfgang Helbich and Walter D. Kamphoefner, 69-114. Madison: Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004.

• Germans in Minnesota. Saint Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2003.

• "Ethnicity and Musical Culture among the German Catholics of the Sauk, 1854–1920." In Land without Nightingales: Music in the Making of German-America, edited by Philip V. Bohlman and Otto Holzapfel, 31–71. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.

• "German-Catholic Communalism and the American Civil War: Exploring the Dilemmas of Transatlantic Political Integration." In Bridging the Atlantic: Europe and the United States in Modern Times, edited by Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt and Hermann Wellenreuther, 119–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

• "Phantom Landscapes of Colonization: Germans in the Making of a Pluralist America." In The German-American Encounter: Conflict and Cooperation between Two Cultures, 1800–2000, edited by Frank Trommler and Elliott Shore, 7–21. New York: Berghahn Books, 2001.

• "Pi-ing the Type: Jane Grey Swisshelm and the Contest of Midwestern Regionality." In The American Midwest: Essays on Regional History, edited by Andrew L. Cayton and Susan Gray, 91–110. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.

• "German Catholics in America." In The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, edited by Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley, 571–83. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1997.

• "The Winnebago Urban System: Indian Policy and Townsite Promotion on the Upper Mississippi." In Cities and Markets: Studies in the Organization of Human Space, edited by Rondo Cameron, 269–310. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1997.

• "Forum: The Place of Religion in Urban and Community Studies." Religion and American Culture 6 (1996): 108–14.

• "The Stories Immigrants Tell." Swedish American Historical Quarterly 46 (1995): 49–57.

• "A Saga of Families." In Oxford History of the American West, edited by Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O'Conner, and Martha A. Sandweiss, 315–57. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

• "Ethnic Patterns in American Cities: Historiographical Trends." In Swedes in America: New Perspectives, edited by Ulf Beijbom, 24–32. Växjö, Sweden: Swedish Emigrant Institute, 1993.

• "Mainstreams and Side Channels: The Localization of Immigrant Cultures." Journal of American Ethnic History 11 (1991): 5–20.

• "Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Agricultural History." In Agriculture and National Development: Views on the Nineteenth Century, edited by Louis Ferleger, 303–42. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990.

• Co-authored with David A. Gerber, Ewa Morawska, George E. Pozzetta, and Rudolph J. Vecoli. "The Invention of Ethnicity." Journal of American Ethnic History 12 (1992): 3–41.

• "Ethnicity as Festive Culture: German-America on Parade." In The Invention of Ethnicity, edited by Werner Sollors,  44–76. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

The Antislavery Ethic and the Spirit of Commerce: An American History of Human Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, forthcoming.

From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

• Frederick Jackson Turner Prize, 1999. (For the best first book in US History, awarded by the Organization of American Historians.)
• Morris D. Forkosch Award, 1999. (For the best book in intellectual history.)
• Avery O. Craven Award, 1999. (For the best book on the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, awarded by the Organization of American Historians.)
• Frederick Douglass Prize, 1999, honorable mention. (For the best book on the history of slavery.)

• "The Sovereign Market and Sex Difference: Human Rights in America." In American Capitalism: New Histories, edited by Sven Beckert and Christine Desan. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
• "Slave Emancipation and the Revolutionizing of Human Rights." In The World the Civil War Made, edited by Greg Downs and Kate Masur. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
• “Contract.” In Keywords for American Cultural Studies, 2nd ed., edited by B. Burgett and G. Hendler. New York: New York University Press, 2014.
• "Slave Breeding and Free Love: An Antebellum Argument over Slavery, Capitalism, and Personhood." In Capitalism Takes Command, edited by Michael Zakim and Gary Kornblith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
• "Instead of Waiting for the Thirteenth Amendment: The War Power, Slave Marriage, and Inviolate Human Rights." American Historical Review 115, no. 3 (June 2010): 732–65.
• "When We Were Young." In Wayne F. Miller: Photographs 1942–1958, edited by Stephen Daiter. Brooklyn: Powerhouse Books, 2008.
• "Wages, Sin, and Slavery: Some Thoughts on Free Will and Commodity Relations." Journal of the Early Republic 24 (Sum. 2004).
• "Dominion and Dependence in the Law of Freedom and Slavery." Law & Social Inquiry 28, no. 3 (Aut. 2003): 1127-34.
• "Marriage, Property, and Ideals of Class." In Blackwell's Companion to American Women's History, edited by Nancy Hewitt. Oxford: Blackwell Press, 2002.
• "The Right to Possess All the Faculties that God Has Given: Possessive Individualism, Slave Women, and Abolitionist Thought." In Moral Problems in American Life, edited by Lewis Perry and Karen Halttunnen. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
• "'We Did Not Separate Man and Wife, But All Had to Work': Freedom and Dependence in the Aftermath of Slave Emancipation"  in Terms of Labor: Slavery, Serfdom, and Free Labor, edited by Stanley Engerman, Stanford University Press, 1999.
• "Home Life and the Morality of the Marketplace: Slavery and Freedom, Women and Men." In The Market Revolution in America, edited by Melvyn Stokes. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996.
• "Beggars Can't Be Choosers: Compulsion and Contract in Postbellum America." Journal of American History 78, no. 4 (Mar. 1992): 1265–93.
• "Conjugal Bonds and Wage Labor: Rights of Contract in the Age of Emancipation." Journal of American History 75, no. 2 (Sept. 1988): 471–500.

• Quoted in the NYT article, "Juneteenth Reminds Us to Think About Economic Freedom, Not Just Legal Liberty"
• Quoted in the Washington Post on polarization, the history of race in the US, and the GOP
• Comments on the Florida Board of Education's guidelines on teaching Black history in Newsweek
• Co-writes with Craig Becker for the New York Times on Amazon's opposition to mail-in ballot unionization votes
• Writes for the Washington Post on the Commerce Clause and pandemic liability protection for businesses
• Quoted in the Burlington Free Press on the history of the Confederate Flag
• Quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the meaning of Chicago 1968
• Chairs 2018 Pulitzer Prize for History Jury
• Writes for Slate on the abolition of slavery, theatergoing, and the right to happiness
• Named an OAH Distinguished Lecturer
• Kyle Volk, PhD'08, Praises Stanley's Scholarship on the Oxford University Press blog
• Participates on Yale Panel on the 14th Amendment
• Amy Dru Stanley and Jonathan Levy Embark on New Study of the Economy
• Coorganizes "Human Trafficking, Labor Migration, and Migration Control in Comparative Historical Perspective" conference, Pozen Family Center for Human Rights
• Writes for the New York Times Opinionator blog on the Civil War Enlistment Act

• Utopia’s Discontents: Russian Émigrés and the Quest for Freedom, 1830s-1930s, Oxford University Press, 2021. Awarded the 2022 Wayne S. Vucinich Prize.
• "'The Franco-Russian Marseillaise': International Exchange and the Making of Anti-Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siècle France." Journal of Modern History 89, no. 1 (Mar. 2017): 39–78.
• "Children of Rus’: Nationalist Imaginations in Right-Bank Ukraine." In The Future of the Past: New Perspectives in Ukrainian History, edited by Serhii Plokhy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.
• "Making and Breaking the Russian Empire: The Case of Kiev’s Shul’gin Family." In Imperiale Biographien: Elitekarrieren im Habsburger, Russischen und Osmanischen Vielvölkerreich (1850–1918), edited by Malte Rolf and Tim Buchen, 178–98. Munich: Oldenbourg-Verlag, 2015.
• "Intimacy and Antipathy: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in Historical Perspective." Kritika 16, no. 1 (Win. 2015): 121–28.
• Children of Rus': Right-Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Russian Nation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013.
• "Modernist Visions and Political Conflict in Late Imperial Kiev." In Races to Modernity: Metropolitan Aspirations in Eastern Europe, 1890–1940, edited by Jan C. Behrends and Martin Kolrausch. New York: Central European Press, 2014.
• "Ukrainophile Activism and Imperial Governance in Russia's Southwestern Borderlands." Kritika 13, no. 2 (Spr. 2012): 301–26.
• "Migration, Mobility, and Political Conflict in Late Imperial Kiev." In Russia on the Move: Essays on the Politics, Society and Culture of Human Mobility, 1850–Present, edited by John Randolph and Eugene Avrutin. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, Studies of World Migrations Series, 2011.

• Writes op-ed on seizing Russian oligarchs' wealth for The Atlantic
• Interviewed for Meduza on Putin's presentation of Ukrainian and Soviet history
• Quoted in USA Today article on how historians see the invasion of Ukraine
• Quoted in Politifact on the history of Russian imperialism
• Interviewed for The World on the entangled histories of Russia and Ukraine
• Writes op-ed on immigration for The Washington Post
• Quoted in Chicago Tribune article on the meaning of "concentration camp"
• Named a 2018–19 Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library
• Review of AHA session on "History and Historians in the Ukraine Crisis" by Sarah Fenton
• Quoted in National Geographic article on Ukrainian-Russian conflict
• Children of Rus' reviewed in the Moscow Times

• The Boundaries of Freedom: Slavery, Abolition, and the Making of Modern Brazil, co-edited with Keila Grinberg. Cambridge University Press, 2022.
• Cities from Scratch: Poverty and Informality in Urban Latin America, co-edited with Bryan McCann, and Javier Auyero. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.
• A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008 (paperback, 2011).
• The Boundaries of Freedom: Slavery, Abolition, and the Making of Modern Brazil, co-edited with Keila Grinberg, in production, Cambridge University Press.

• “Historicizing Informal Governance in 20th Century Brazil,” Contemporary Social Science, May 2021.
• "A ética do silêncio racial no contexto urbano: políticas públicas e desigualdade social no Recife, 1900-1940," Anais do Museu Paulista, 28 (2020): 1-45. 
• “From the Mocambo to the Favela: Statistics and Social Policy in Brazil’s Informal Cities,” Histoire et Mesure 34, no. 1 (2019): 15-40. 
• “Favelas and Politics in Brazil, 1890-1960,” in William Beezley, ed., Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Latin American History, Oxford University Press, 2019.
• "Urban Informality and the Paradoxes of Developmental State Building," in State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: The Rise and Fall of the Developmental State, edited by Miguel Centeno and Agustín Ferraro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• "Ethos and Pathos in Millennial Brazil." Latin American Research Review 53, no. 2 (June 2018): 394–402.
• "Law, Silence and Racialized Inequalities in the History of Afro-Brazil," with Keila Grinberg and Hebe Mattos. In Afro-Latin American Studies: An Introduction, edited by Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 130–78.
• "Beyond Insurgency and Dystopia: The Role of Informality in Brazil’s Twentieth-Century Urban Formation." In Public Goods versus Economic Interests: Global Perspectives on the History of Squatting, edited by Freia Anders and Alexander Sedlmaier. New York: Routledge, 2016, 122–49.
• "The Red Menace Reconsidered: A Forgotten History of Communist Mobilization in Rio's Favelas, 1945–1964." Hispanic American Historical Review 94, no. 1 (2014): 1–33.
• "Urban History." In Oxford Bibliographies Online (2013)
• "Democracy, Thuggery, and the Grassroots: Antoine Magarinos Torres and the União dos Trabalhadores Favelados in the Age of Carioca Populism." Nuevo Mundo–Mundos Nuevos, Colloquium: "Repensando los populismos en América Latina," February 2013.
• "Partindo a cidade maravilhosa" (Dividing the Marvelous City). In Quase cidadão: histórias e antropologias da pós-emancipação no Brasil, edited by Flávio dos Santos Gomes and Olívia Maria Gomes da Cunha. Rio de Janeiro: Editora da Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 2007, 419–50.
• "Direitos por lei, ou leis por direito?" (Rights by Law or Laws by Right?). In Direitos e justiças no Brasil: Histórias plurais, edited by Silvia Lara and Joseli Mendonça, 417–56. São Paulo: UNICAMP Press, 2006.
• "Slandering Citizens: Insults, Class and Social Legitimacy in Rio de Janeiro's Criminal Courts." In Honor, Status, and the Law in Modern Latin America, edited by Sueann Caulfield, Lara Putnam, and Sarah Chambers, 176–200. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
• "Quase Pretos de Tão Pobres? Race, Class, and Criminal Justice in Rio de Janeiro." Latin American Research Review 39, no. 1 (February 2004): 31–59.

• Profiled on BBS Brasil on teaching Brazilian history
• Part of the core team of La Ville informelle au XXe siècle
• Discusses contemporary urban studies with Marco Garrido, Dialogo, Winter 2018
• Discusses Urban Poverty in Latin America [video, 3 minutes]

• “Containers and Mobility in West Africa.” In "On Containers," edited by Andrew Shyrock and Daniel Lord Smail. Special issue, History and Anthropology 29, no. 1 (2018): forthcoming.
• Editor, The Journal of African History.
• "Containers, Energy, and the Anthropocene in West Africa." In Economic Development and Environmental History in the Anthropocene: Perspectives on Asia and Africa, edited by Gareth Austin. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.
• "From Bauxite to Cooking Pots: Aluminum, Chemistry, and West African Artisanal Production." In "Exploring Global History through the Lens of History of Chemistry," edited by Lissa Roberts. Special issue, History of Science 54, no. 4 (Dec. 2016): 425–42.
• "Red Echoes of Enslavement: Cochineal Red, West Africa, and the Slave Trade." In A Red Like No Other: How Cochineal Colored the World, edited by Carmella Padilla and Barbara Anderson. New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2015.
• "Work and Migration." In The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History, edited by Richard Reid and John Parker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Our New Husbands Are Here: Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the Slave Trade to Colonial Rule. Athens: Ohio University Press, New African Histories, 2011.
• "Casting Aluminium Cooking Pots: Labour, Migration and Artisan Production in West Africa’s Informal Sector, 1945–2005." African Identities 7, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 373–86.
• "Loyalty, Perfidy, and Scandal in Guinée Française: The Noirot-Penda Affair." In Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa, edited by Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
• Coauthor with Richard Roberts and Benjamin Lawrance. "Introduction: Intermediaries and the Making of Colonial Africa." In Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa, edited by Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
• "'Rubber Fever,' Commerce and French Colonial Rule in Upper Guinée, 1890–1913." Journal of African History 45 (2004): 445–65.
• "'Circle of Iron': African Colonial Employees and the Interpretation of Colonial Rule in French West Africa, 1890–1910." Journal of African History 44 (2003): 27–48. Reprinted in The Rise and Fall of Modern Empires: Social Organisation, vol. I, edited by Owen White. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2013.

• Delivered convocation address, Graham School [20 mins]
• Participates in Q&A on how to teach the Anthropocene, EuropeNow, with syllabus
• Received 2016 Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
• Coorganized "Climate Change: Disciplinary Challenges to the Humanities and Social Sciences"
• Organized "Global Midwest" conference
• Discusses effective public speaking for AHA Today (blog)

Coeditor with J. R. McNeill. Production, Destruction, and Connection, 1750–Present. Part 1: Structures, Spaces, and Boundary Making, The Cambridge World History, vol. VII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Coeditor with J. R. McNeill. Production, Destruction, and Connection, 1750–Present. Part 2: Shared Transformations? The Cambridge World History, vol. VII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Coeditor with Laura J. Mitchell and James B. Given. Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A Companion Reader. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. 

La Force de L’Empire: Révolution industrielle et écologie, ou pourquoi l’angleterre a fait mieux que la Chine. Edited, with an introduction, by Philippe Minard. Alfortville: Éditions ère, 2009.

The book collects various pieces of my work previously published in English, with some previously unpublished material added in Chapter II.

Editor, The Pacific in the Age of Early Industrialization. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2009.

Coeditor with Kate Merkel-Hess and Jeffrey Wasserstrom. China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance. Washington, DC: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009.

"Introduction: the Environment and World History" and "The Transformation of China's Environment, 1500–2000." In The Environment and World History, 1500–2000. Coedited with Edmund T. Burke III, 3–32, 118–164. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

Coeditor with John McCusker, Stanley Engerman, David Hancock, and Lewis Cain. Encyclopedia of the History of World Trade. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale 2005. 

The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Coauthor with Steven Topik. The World that Trade Created: Society, Politics and an Emerging World Economy, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999; fourth edition, 2017.

The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society and Economy in Inland North China, 1853–1937. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 

• "Repenser le changement économique de longue durée: La Chine, l’Europe, et l’historie comparée." In L'histoire économique en mouvement: entre héritages et renouvellements, edited by Jean Claude Daumas, 293–310. Villieneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2012.
• "Contemporary Development and Economic History: How Do We Know What Matters?" Economic History of Developing Regions, special issue for World Economic History Congress 27, no. 1 (2012): 134–145.
• "The Great Divergence debate at 10—and at 250." Historically Speaking 12, no. 4 (September/October, 2011). Response to a forum on the tenth anniversary of the publication of The Great Divergence.
• "Areas, Networks, and the Search for 'Early Modern' East Asia." In Comparative Early Modernities, edited by David L. Porter. London: Palgrave, 2012.
• "Labor-Intensive Industrialization in the Yangzi Delta: Late Imperial Patterns and their Modern Fates." In Labor-Intensive Industrialization in Global History, edited by Kaoru Sugihara and G.M. Austin. London: Routledge, 2012.
• Coauthor with Daniel Segal. "World History: Departures and Variations." In A Companion to World History, edited by Douglas Northrop. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
• "Advanced Agriculture." In The Oxford Handbook of World History, edited by Jerry H. Bentley, 246–266. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• "Labeling and Analyzing Historical Phenomena: Some Preliminary Challenges." Cliodynamics: The Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History 2, no. 1 (March 2011): 3–27.
• "Commerce."  In The Oxford Concise Companion to World History, edited by U.C. Rublack, 105–128. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011.
• "Their Own Path to Crisis? Social Change, State-Building, and the Limits of Qing Expansion, ca. 1770–1840." In The Age of Revolutions in a Global Context, edited by David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 189–208. New York: Palgrave, 2010.
• "Putting Modernity in Its Place(s): Reflections on Jack Goody's The Theft of History." Theory, Culture, and Society 26, no. 7/8 (December 2009): 32–51. 
• "Shang xia Taishan—Zhongguo minjian xinyang zhengzhi zhong de Bixia yuanjun (yue gongyuan 1500 nian zhi 1949 nian." (Up and Down Mt. Tai—Bixia Yuanjun in the Politics of Chinese Popular Religion, ca 1500–1949) Xin shixue 20, no. 4 (December, 2009): 169–215.
• "Le machinisme induit-il une discontinuité historique? Industrialisation, modernité précoce et formes du changement économique dans l’histoire globale." In Histoire globale, mondialisations, capitalisme, edited by P. Beaujard, L. Berger, and P. Norel, 335–373. Paris: La Découverte, 2009.
• "Calamities Without Collapse: Environment, Economy and Society in China, ca. 1800–1949." In Questioning Collapse, edited by Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• "The Great Himalayan Watershed: Agrarian Crisis, Mega-Dams, and the Environment." New Left Review 58 (July/August 2009): 5–39 (short version). Longer version published in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (July 27, 2009). Abridged version published in Engineering World (August/September 2009): 32–42.
• "World History and Environmental History: Introducing an Agenda," and "China's State, Economy and Environment in Global Perspective, 1400–2000." In Environmental History and World History, edited by both in Edmund Burke III and Kenneth Pomeranz, 3–32, 118–164. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
• "Introduction: Industrialization and the pacific world ca. 1800-1930 - and beyond" In The Pacific in the Age of Early Industrialization, edited by Kenneth Pomeranz, xiii–xlix. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. 
• "Rekishi wa gurobaru kenkyu ni dono yō na kōken ga de suru ka?" (What Does History Have to Offer to Global Studies?). In Gurobaru Hisutori no Chōsen (Challenges of Global History), edited by Mizushima Tsukasa, 46–55. Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2008.
• "Land Markets in Late Imperial and Republican China." Continuity and Change 23, no. 1 (April 2008): 101–150.
• "Chinese Development in Long-run Perspective." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 152, no. 1 (March 2008): 83–100.
• "Social History and World History: From Daily Life to Patterns of Change." Journal of World History 18, no. 1 (March 2007). Chinese translation, 2009
• "Orthopraxy, Orthodoxy, and the Goddess(es) of Taishan." Modern China 33, no. 1 (January 2007): 22–46.
• "Limian jingji: Zhonghua diguo wanqi de nongcun shouru, feiwendingxing yu xigbie guifan" (The Economics of Respectability: Rural Incomes, Instability, and Gender Roles in Late Imperial China). Jindai Zhongguo funu shi yanjiu (Research on Modern Chinese Women’s History) 14 (December 2006): 205–241. A revised and translated version of "Women's Work and the Economics of Respectability." In Gender in Motion, edited by Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.
• "Without Coal? Colonies? Calculus? Europe, China, and the Industrial Revolution." In Unmaking the West: "What-If" scenarios that Rewrite World History, edited by Ned Lebow, Geoffrey Parker, and Philip Tetlock, 241–276. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.
• "Imperialism, Development, and 'Civilizing' Missions, Past and Present." Daedalus (April 2005).
• "Standards of Living in Eighteenth-Century China: Regional Differences, Temporal Trends, and Incomplete Evidence." In Standards of Living and Mortality in Pre-Industrial Times, edited by Robert Allen, Tommy Bengtsson, and Martin Dribe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• "Zhuanbian de diguo: Zhonghua diguo moqi de falu, shehui, shangyehua he guojia xingcheng" (An Empire in Transition: Law, Society, Commercialization, and State Formation in Late Imperial China). Zhongguo Xueshu 15 (Winter 2004).
• "Shijie jingji shi zhong de jinshi Jiangnan: bijiao yu zonghe guancha" (Early Modern Jiangnan in Global Economic History: Comparative and Integrative Perspectives). Lishi yanjiu 284 (August 2003): 3–48.
• "Women's Work, Family, and Economic Development in Europe and East Asia: Long-term Trajectories and Contemporary Comparisons." In The Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150, and 50 Year Perspectives, edited by Giovanni Arrighi, Takeshi Hamashita, and Mark Selden, 124–172. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
• "Beyond the East-West Binary: Resituating Development Paths in the Eighteenth Century World." Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 2 (May 2002): 539–590.
• "Political Economy and Ecology on the Eve of Industrialization: Europe, China, and the Global Conjuncture." American Historical Review 107, no. 2 (April 2002): 425–446. Translated and reprinted in Globalgeschichte: Theoriean, Ansätze, Themen, vol. 1, edited by Sebastian Conrad, Andreas Eckert and Ulrike Freitag. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2007. Also translated and reprinted in La Rivoluzione industriale tra l’Europa e il mondo, edited by Tommaso Detti  and Giovanni Gozzinni. Milan: Pearson Paravia Bruno Mondadori, 2009.
• "Is there an East Asian Development Path? Long-Term Comparisons, Constraints, and Continuities." Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 44, no. 3 (2001): 322–362. Abridged and translated versions published in Japanese and German, 2003.
• "Development, Disaggregation and Decline: Re-thinking the Chinese Economy, ca. 1730–1930." Itinerario (Winter 2001): 29–74. Translated version published in Chinese, 2010.
• "Ritual Imitation and Political Identity in North China: The Late Imperial Legacy and the Chinese National State Revisited." Twentieth-Century China (formerly Republican China) 23, no. 1 (Fall 1997): 1–30.
• "'Gentry Merchants' and Partnership Revisited: Family, Firm, and Financing in the History of the Yutang Enterprises of Jining, 1779–1956." Late Imperial China 18, no. 2 (June 1997): 1–38.
• "Power, Gender, and Pluralism in the Cult of the Goddess of Taishan." In  Culture and State in Chinese History, edited by R. Bin Wong, Theodore Huters, and Pauline Yu. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
• "Local Interest Story: State‑Making and Capital Markets in Shandong Province, 1900–1937." In Chinese History in Economic Perspective, edited by Thomas Rawski and Lillian Li, 295–318. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
• "Water to Iron, Widows to Warlords: The Handan Rain Shrine in Modern Chinese History." Late Imperial China 12, no. 1 (June 1991).

• Receives Dan David Prize, 2019.
• Publishes 4th edition (with Steven Topik) of The World that Trade Created (2017)
• Publishes Production, Destruction, and Connection, 1750–Present. Part 1: Structures, Spaces, and Boundary Making and Part 2: Shared Transformations?
• Leads Mellon Foundation Pilot Project on Professional Careers for Historian
• L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales selects The Great Divergence as one of the top 40 books of the last 40 years.
• Delivers the Schouler Lectures on "Why Is China So Big?" at Johns Hopkins University (2014)
• Speaks on "Property Rights and Community Membership in the Late Imperial and Twentieth-Century Yangzi Delta," Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago (2014) [video, 47 minutes]
• Delivers the University of Chicago Harper Lecture on the "Unique Patterns of Chinese Economic Development" [video, 85 minutes]
• Serves as president of the American Historical Association