“Our model is essentially an accounting exercise that allows us to uncover the key factors of growth in China during and after the Mao era,” said Aleh Tsyvinski, a professor of economics at Yale and co-author of the report.

“The main point of our findings is that, contrary to common misconceptions, productivity growth under Mao, particularly in the non-agricultural sector, was actually pretty good.”

Watch out for the extreme liberalism in this article summary of the original paper, though the Financial Times' article on it was actually worse and shallower.

Original paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21397