On December 13, 2018, the University of Chicago had the pleasure supporting the INET-INSE Joint Conference on New Structural Economics led by alumnus Justin Yifu Lin, Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University. Roger Myerson, Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics from the University of Chicago and other speakers from China and abroad discussed topics on new structural economics as well as 40 years of Chinese economic transformation and philosophical traditions in economics. Professor Yong Wang of INSE, who also obtained his PhD in economics from UChicago played a key role in the organization of the conference that attracted more than 80 researchers and participants.
Conference Organizing Committee
INSE (Institute of New Structural Economics, INSE)
Prof. Yong Wang (co-chair): yongwang@nsd.pku.edu.cn
Prof. Xin Wang (co-chair): xinwang@nsd.pku.edu.cn
Mr. Shengtao Yu: shengtaoyu@nsd.pku.edu.cn
INET (Institute for New Economic Thinking, INET)
Mr. Jack Gao (co-chair): jgao@ineteconomics.org
Agenda
08:00-08:50
Breakfast Keynote: Economics and 40 Years of Reform in China
Speaker: Julian Gewirtz
Chair: Jack Gao
09:00-10:00
New Structural Economics (NSE): An Introduction
Speaker: Justin Yifu Lin, Robert Johnson
Moderator: Yong Wang
10:15–11:15
NSE and History of Thoughts in Development Economics
How NSE fits in history of thoughts and bridges structuralism and neoclassical economics
Panelists: Ashwini Deshpande, Finn Tarp, Celestin Monga, Francis Lui
Moderator: Yuan Yang
11:30-12:45
NSE and 40 Years of Chinese Economic Transformation
A panel on how insights of NSE could be applied to China’s development
Panelists: Justin YIfu Lin, Edmund S. Phelps, Adair Turner, Xiaodong Zhu
Moderator: Jack Gao
12:45-14:15
Lunch Keynote
Speaker: Roger Myerson
Host: Yong Wang
14:15-15:45
NSE and African Economies
A number of cases of African economies to demonstrate how NSE may be applied.
Panelists: Celestin Monga, Arkebe Oqubay, Adair Turner,
Folashade Soule-Kohndou
Moderator: John Powell
16:00-17:30
Philosophical Traditions in Economics: East and West
A discussion of insights from different philosophical traditions in China, US, Europe and what economic thoughts and framework have resulted. The session may cover: 10 years after the global financial crisis discredited the western economic paradigm, implications of the Scandinavian model, and development economics for the 21st century
Panelist: Justin Yifu Lin, Hui Wang, Andrew Sheng, Weisen Li
Moderator: Robert Johnson
Participants:
ASHWINI DESHPANDE
Ashwini Deshpande is Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. Her Ph.D. and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action, with a focus on caste and gender in India. She has published extensively in leading scholarly journals. She is the author of “Grammar of Caste: economic discrimination in contemporary India", Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011 (Hardcover) and 2017 (Paperback); and “Affirmative Action in India”, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, Oxford India Short Introductions series, 2013. She is the editor of “Boundaries of Clan and Color: Transnational Comparisons of Inter-Group Disparity" (along with William Darity, Jr.), Routledge, London, 2003; “Globalization and Development: A Handbook of New Perspectives", Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2007 (Hardcover) and 2010 (Paperback); “Capital Without Borders: Challenges to Development", Anthem Press, UK, 2010 (Hardcover) and 2012 (Paperback) and “Global Economic Crisis and the Developing World" (with Keith Nurse), Routledge, London, 2012. She received the EXIM Bank award for outstanding dissertation (now called the IERA Award) in 1994, and the 2007 VKRV Rao Award for Indian economists under 45.
JACK GAO
Jack Gao is a program economist at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. He currently works as the overall coordinator of the Commission on Global Economic Transformation in the Institute, chaired by Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence. He blogs on globalization, inequality, and the Chinese economy. He holds a MPA in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and BSc in Economics from Singapore Management University. He’s a recipient of School of Economics Scholarship from SMU, and research grants from the Ash Center and Belfer Center from Harvard Kennedy School. He has published articles in China Policy Review and Kennedy School Review.
JULIAN BAIRD GEWIRTZ
Julian Baird Gewirtz is currently an Academy Scholar at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He completed his doctorate in history in 2018 at the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China (Harvard University Press, 2017), which The Economist called "a gripping read, highlighting what was little short of a revolution in China’s economic thought." Professionally fluent in Mandarin Chinese, he has written on Asia for publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, Caixin, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. From 2015 to 2016, he was on leave from Oxford and served in the Obama Administration, most recently as special advisor for international affairs to the Deputy Secretary of Energy. Julian's poems have been published by AGNI, Boston Review, The Nation, The New Republic, PEN America, Ploughshares, and The Yale Review, and have received recognition from the Academy of American Poets and Best New Poets 2016. His poetry criticism and nonfiction essays have been published by The Economist, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Poetry Foundation, and the Washington Post. Julian received his A.B. degree, summa cum laude, from Harvard College in 2013.
BO HU
Bo Hu joined the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University in 2017. He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from Indiana University, Bloomington. Bo Hu's primary research interests include econometrics and macroeconomics. He focuses on time series and functional data analysis, and their applications in macroeconomics and finance.
SHENZHE JIANG
Shenzhe Jiang is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University. He earned his PhD from Texas A&M University in 2017. His research is in the field of Macroeconomics. He currently focuses on studies of dynamic contract, asset pricing and monetary economics.
ROB JOHNSON
Rob Johnson serves as President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Finance Project for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York. He is an international investor and consultant to investment funds on issues of portfolio strategy. He served on the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz. Previously, Johnson was a Managing Director at Soros Fund Management where he managed a global currency, bond and equity portfolio specializing in emerging markets. Prior to working at Soros Fund Management, he was a Managing Director of Bankers Trust Company managing a global currency fund. Johnson served as Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee under the leadership of Chairman William Proxmire (D. Wisconsin). Before this, he was Senior Economist of the US Senate Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Pete Domenici (R. New Mexico). Johnson was an Executive Producer of the Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney, and is the former President of the National Scholastic Chess Foundation. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of both the Economic Policy Institute and the Campaign for America’s Future. Johnson received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Princeton University and a B.S. in both Electrical Engineering and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
JUSTIN YIFU LIN
Justin Yifu LIN is Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics, Dean of Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development and Professor and Honorary Dean of National School of Development at Peking University. He was the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, 2008-2012. Prior to this, Mr. Lin served for 15 years as Founding Director and Professor of the China Centre for Economic Research (CCER) at Peking University. He is Councilor of the State Council and a member of the Standing Committee, Chinese People’s Political Consultation Conference. He is the author of more than 20 books including Beating the Odd: Jump-starting Developing Countries; Going Beyond Aid: Development Cooperation for Structural Transformation, the Quest for Prosperity: How Developing Economies Can Take Off, New Structural Economics: A Framework for Rethinking Development and Policy, Against the Consensus: Reflections on the Great Recession, and Demystifying the Chinese Economy. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for Developing World.
FRANCIS T. LUI
Francis T. Lui is Adjunct Professor and University Honorary Fellow at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is also Honorary Director, China Economic Research Program of Lingnan University. He was the Head of the Department of Economics, Associate Dean of the Business School and Director of the Center for Economic Development at HKUST. He received his undergrad and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago and University of Minnesota, respectively. He joined HKUST as a founding faculty in 1991. Professor Lui's research interests include economic growth, social security, corruption, family economics, exchange rate systems, the Hong Kong economy and the Chinese economy. Author or editor of 13 books, he has published numerous articles in leading international journals, such as Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Public Economics, and Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. A well-known commentator, he has been a member of numerous government advisory bodies. He has been appointed as a Justice of the Peace and awarded a Bronze Bauhinia Star Medal by the Hong Kong Government for “his distinguished academic achievements in the fields of economics and finance, as well as his dedicated and meritorious public service.”
CELESTIN MONGA
Célestin Monga is the Vice President and Chief Economist of the African Development Bank Group. He has held various board and senior executive positions in academia, financial services, and international development institutions, serving most recently as Managing Director at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and Senior Economic Advisor-Director at the World Bank. Prior to these assignments he was Manager in the Bank Nationale de Paris Group, a member of the Board of Directors of the Sloan School of Management Fellows Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and taught economics at Boston University and the University of Bordeaux. He currently also serves as a pro bono Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and Peking University. Dr. Monga has published extensively on various dimensions of economic and political development. His books have been translated into several languages and are widely used as teaching tools in academic institutions around the world. His most recent works include Beating the Odds: Jump-Starting Developing Countries (Princeton University Press, 2017), with Justin Yifu Lin; the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics (Oxford University Press, 2015), co-edited with Justin Yifu Lin; and Nihilism and Negritude: Ways of Living in Africa (Harvard University Press, 2016). Dr. Monga holds graduate degrees from MIT, Harvard University, the Universities of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Pau.
JOHN A. POWELL
John is the Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, a UC Berkeley research institute that brings together scholars, organizers, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society and to create transformative change toward a more equitable nation. John holds the Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion and is a Professor of Law, African American Studies, and Ethnic Studies. He was recently the Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University and held the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the Moritz College of Law. John has written extensively on issues including racial justice, concentrated poverty and urban sprawl, opportunity based housing, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity, spirituality and social justice, and the needs of citizens in a democratic society. He is the author of several books, including his most recent work, Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society. john also founded and directed the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. He has also served as Director of Legal Services in Miami, Florida and was the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was instrumental in developing educational adequacy theory. John has worked and lived in Africa, where he was a consultant to the governments of Mozambique and South Africa. He has also lived and worked in India and done work in South America and Europe. He is one of the co-founders of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the board of several national organizations. John has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University.
ANDREW SHENG
Andrew Sheng is Distinguished Fellow of Asia Global Institute, The University of Hong Kong. He is Chief Adviser to China Banking Regulatory Commission, a Board Member of Khazanah Nasional Berhad and a member of the international advisory councils of China Investment Corporation, China Development Bank, China Securities Regulatory Commission, Securities and Exchange Board of India and Bank Indonesia Institute. Previously, he was a Chairman of the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong and a central banker with Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Bank Negara Malaysia. He writes regularly on international finance and monetary economics, financial regulation and global governance for Project Syndicate, AsiaNewsNet and leading economic magazines and newspapers in China and Asia. His latest book is Shadow Banking in China: An Opportunity for Financial Reform, with Ng Chow Soon (2016, John Wiley).
FOLASHADE SOULE
Folashadé Soulé is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, formerly as a Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellow and currently as a Visiting Scholar at the Blavatnik School of Government. She holds a PhD (summa cum laude) in International Relations from Sciences Po Paris. During and since defending her PhD, she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the London School of Economics (LSE), and a part-time Lecturer in International Relations and Political Science (Africa and Global Politics; the Politics of Globalization; International Political Economy). Folashade's current research investigates the negotiation practices of francophone African governments when dealing with China (infrastructure projects). It aims to challenge the prevailing wisdom in international relations that bureaucracies and governments of ‘weak’ countries exert minimal influence when they negotiate with ‘strong’ countries such as China, and will add precious empirical and theoretical knowledge to a small but growing body of research on small developing countries in asymmetric negotiations. She has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Global Governance, Afrique contemproaine, Foro Internacional and Cahiers des Amériques Latines, and is on the editorial board of African Affairs (Oxford University Press). As a policy-facing academic - connecting policy and research, she has been acting as an international strategy consultant for the OECD, the French Development Agency (AFD), the Presidency of Benin, and several consultancy firms (Oxford Analytica, Ernst&Young, Deloitte). She has also trained young diplomats and military civil servants in Bamako, Mali in methodology and analytical tools in international relations.
ADAIR TURNER
Lord Turner is Chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Prior to joining the Institute in 2013, he chaired the UK Financial Services Authority (2008-2013) and played a leading role in the redesign of the global banking and shadow banking regulation as Chairman of the International Financial Stability Board’s major policy committee. Lord Turner has combined a business career with public policy and academia. He was at McKinsey from 1982-95, building their practice in East Europe and Russia; was Director General of the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) 1995-2000; became Vice-Chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe (2000-06) and has been a Non-Executive Director of a number of companies, including Standard Chartered plc (2006-08). Currently Lord Turner is an advisor to the Board of UK start-up bank OakNorth, a non-Executive Director at Prudential plc., and most recently appointed Chairman of CHUBB Europe. He is also chairing the Energy Transitions Commission, and is a Trustee of the British Museum. A cross-bench member of the House of Lords since 2005, he served as the first Chairman of the Climate Change Committee (2008-12); chaired the Pensions Commission (2003-06) and the Low Pay Commission (2002-06). His latest book Between Debt and the Devil, was published by Princeton in 2015 and has been translated into Chinese; other publications include ‘Just Capital-The Liberal Economy’ (2001); ‘Economics After the Crisis’ (2012). He is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Financial Studies (Frankfurt), and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and at Cass Business School. More recently he’s been appointed Visiting Fellow at the People’s Bank of China School of Finance, Tsinghua University (Beijing) and Visiting Professor at the International Center for Islamic Finance (INCEIF) in Kuala Lumpur. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016.
HUI WANG
Hui Wang is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He has been Visiting Professor at Harvard, Edinburgh, Bologna (Italy), Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, and the University of Washington, among others. He served as the coeditor of the influential Chinese journal Dushu in the past, and is a highly influential figure in the academic and sociopolitical debates in China. His many books include The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, The End of Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity (Verso, 2010), The Politics of Imagining Asia (Harvard University Press, 2011), among others. In 2008, the magazine Foreign Policy listed him among the top 100 most influential intellectuals worldwide.
XIN WANG
Xin Wang is currently an assistant professor at the Institute of Structural Economics at Peking University. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2016 and her bachelor's degree in Economics and Statistics from Peking University in 2011. Her research interests include international trade, development economics and labor economics. Currently, her research mainly focuses on the interrelationship between international trade, labor market and structural transformation.
YONG WANG
Yong Wang is an Associate Professor of Economics and Academic Deputy Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University. He obtained PhD from University of Chicago, where he won the Martin and Margaret Lee Prize in Price Theory. His research fields are Growth and Development, Macroeconomics, Political Economy, China and India Economies. His recent research topics include structural change, industry dynamics, industrial policies, China state capitalism, and middle-income trap. He was a resident research fellow at the World Bank (2010-2011). He publishes papers on Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, etc. and also serves as a guest editor for China Economic Review. He is the author of several books including "Thinking and Debates on New Structural Economics" (Peking University Press). Yong was frequently invited to present his research at policy institutions including IMF, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, US Department of State, US Department of Treasury, Federal Reserve Bank, People Bank of China, and Korean Institute of Finance.
JUNJIE XIA
Junjie Xia is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University. His research fields are Macroeconomics, Finance, international trade and Chinese Economy. Current research topics include financial frictions, misallocation, automation, and industrial upgrading and income distribution. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Economics at the University of Southern California in 2017 (Advisor: Vincenzo Quadrini).
JIAJUN XU
Dr. Jiajun Xu is an Assistant Professor in International Development and the Executive Deputy Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University. Xu acts as the General Secretary of the Global Research Consortium on Economic Structural Transformation (GReCEST). Xu worked as a Junior Research Specialist at the United Nations’ High Level Panel Secretariat on the Post-2015 Development Agenda responsible for the research on development financing and South-South Cooperation. She worked as an international consultant on debt sustainability in the World Bank and productive capacity building for least-developed countries at the United Nations Committee for Development Policy Secretariat. She has published in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Journal of International Development and Institute of Development Studies Bulletin. She is the guest editor of China Economic Review. She is the lead author of Global Development Financing Report (2015). Her academic monograph Beyond US Hegemony in International Development was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Xu holds a DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford.
JIANYE YAN
Jianye Yan is an Associate Professor of Economics in the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University. Before joining in INSE, he was an Associate Professor at the School of Banking and Finance at University of International Business and Economics. He earned his PhD from the University of Toulouse in 2011. His research is in the fields of applied micro economics, industrial organization, mechanism design and Chinese economy. He has published papers at American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Journal of Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Economics Letters, Economic Inquiry and Energy Economics.
YUAN YANG
Yuan is a Beijing correspondent at the Financial Times covering China's technology sector and technology policy. Her recent investigative work has delved into multinationals’ supply chains in China, as well as internet censorship and internet controls. Yuan is also Vice-President of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, which seeks to protect press freedoms. Before moving to China in 2016, she wrote about development economics as a Marjorie Deane intern for the Economist in London. Yuan is the co-founder of Rethinking Economics, a charity headquartered in Manchester, UK that campaigns to make economics teaching more relevant to the 21st century. Her academic background is in philosophy and economics and she is particularly interested in feminist economics, development economics, and the industrial policy of innovation.
LIJUN ZHU
Lijun Zhu is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018. His research interest lies within the generally defined macroeconomics and economic growth & development. Current topics he has been conducting research on includes, the role of technical progress on the decline of labor share, its behavior over business cycles and sector heterogeneity, and the role of technology adoption during recessions in driving structural transformation and slow job recoveries.
XIAODONG ZHU
Xiaodong Zhu is a professor of economics at the University of Toronto and a visiting scholar at the PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University. His main research areas are macroeconomics, growth and development, and the Chinese economy. He has published many articles in leading economics journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Economic Theory, and Journal of Development Economics.
