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Ran Abramitzky
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Professor of economics Ran Abramitzky has been named the new senior associate dean of the social sciences in the School of Humanities and Sciences. He will begin his term on September 1, 2020.

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The European Union has passed a stimulus plan of more than $850 billion dollars to bring its economy back on track after the coronavirus pandemic ushered in staggering unemployment rates.

The plan highlights unprecedented actions to bring financial stability to those within the EU that have been most affected.

For more, KCBS Radio was joined by Christophe Crombez, Political Economist and Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University.

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Christophe Crombez
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Jean C. Oi
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Industries all over the world are grappling with new protocols and adaptations needed to safely reopen amongst changes the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought on the global economy. Nowhere have these changes been more apparent than in China, the original epicenter of the pandemic. Now, China is one of the countries leading the way in reopening its national economy.

To explore how business leaders and entrepreneurs in China responded to the lockdown and how they’re planning for the future, the China Program conducted a survey in coordination with the Stanford Center at Peking University and Stanford Business School alumni Christopher Thomas and Xue (Xander) Wu. Though taken from a small sample, the results are one of the best samples to date of how businesses in China are responding to the uncertain geopolitical environment the pandemic and current U.S.-China relations are creating.

High-tech firms and firms with a digital presence or the ability to quickly adapt to a digital environment have faired the best, as might be expected. Less expected are the indications that many of the business leaders surveyed are planning for some degree of 'decoupling' or economic separation from U.S.-based suppliers and markets. Both the pandemic and fluctuating U.S.-China relations have made access to global technologies uncertain and both factors are accelerating desires to create localized supply chains. While the long-term implications of these findings are still unknown, the survey provides a valuable snapshot of the current economic landscape within China. 

Read an excerpt from the article below, and find the full article at The Diplomat. A Chinese language version is available on Caixin.

[Subscribe to our newsletters to always get the latest research from APARC.]


From, "After COVID-19: Rebooting Business in China"

China was the first country to experience the ravages of COVID-19, having lost 4,634 people to the pandemic with 83,565 confirmed cases to date. Draconian measures were used to bend the curve and essentially stop the spread of the disease, although reports indicate that recently new cases have emerged, including those stemming from a Beijing market. For the most part, however, China has loosened restrictions and re-opened large parts of its economy. Individuals scan government-mandated QR health codes with their smartphones, and daily life has been restored to some sense of normalcy with restaurants serving customers and retail shops open to shoppers.

In this pivotal and important time, with streams of foreign policy arguments and opinion pieces sharply analyzing current U.S.-China geopolitical tensions continuing to pour forth, we at the Stanford China Program wanted to take stock of how businesses and the overall economy are coping as China tries to reopen its businesses and reboot its economy. Toward this effort, we conducted a collaborative survey of 135 senior executives in China from May 13-26. The survey was designed to help us better comprehend the variation in how Chinese businesses are reopening as well as how Chinese business leaders are viewing their prospects for the future. The research findings, based on one of the largest surveys to date of senior executives in China, helped us explore the following types of questions: What kinds of businesses have done better and what kinds have done worse? What role has the government played in economic assistance and business reopening? And how do China’s business leaders view the deterioration in U.S.-China relations, the possibility of decoupling, and even future access to technology?


Read the full article at The Diplomat.

Watch the panel discussion on the survey led by Jean Oi, Christopher Thomas, and Xue (Xander) Wu with Alvin Shiqi Wang (王世琪), Xiang Wang (王翔), Simon Yang (杨士宁), and Zhiqiang (ZZ) Zhang (张志强).

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Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China’s Future – Book Launch Panel Discusses Critical Challenges Facing China’s Policymakers

Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China’s Future – Book Launch Panel Discusses Critical Challenges Facing China’s Policymakers
Shiran Shen (left) and Lizhi Liu (right)
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Former Doctoral Students Win Prestigious Dissertation Awards

Interdisciplinary environmental scholar Shiran Victoria Shen is the recipient of the Harold D. Lasswell Award and political economist Lizhi Liu is the recipient of the Ronald H. Coase Award in recognition of their outstanding doctoral dissertations.
Former Doctoral Students Win Prestigious Dissertation Awards
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Public Health Experts Gather Together to Reflect upon Public Health Collaborations with China Amidst COVID-19

Public Health Experts Gather Together to Reflect upon Public Health Collaborations with China Amidst COVID-19
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The survey reveals mixed progress in reopening different sectors of China's economy, but also shows that many business leaders in China are planning for some level of decoupling as access to global technology and supply chains remains uncertain.

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APARC is pleased to share that Stanford alumnae Shiran Victoria Shen and Lizhi Liu have won prestigious awards for best dissertation in their fields. Both Shen and Liu earned their doctoral degrees in Political Science in 2018 and worked with Jean Oi, director of the China Program at APARC, during their tenure as doctoral students.

Shen, who is currently an assistant professor at the University of Virginia, has won the 2020 Harold D. Lasswell Award for her dissertation The Political Pollution Cycle: An Inconvenient Truth and How To Break It. The award is given annually by the American Political Science Association for “the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public policy.” Using a wide array of data, techniques, and research designs, Shen’s work explains how environmental change influences and is shaped by politics and policy. It centers on the critical case of air pollution control policies and uses China as a natural experiment.

Liu, whose doctoral research focuses on the political economy of e-commerce in China, has won the 2020 Ronald H. Coase Best Dissertation Award from the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics. Her study proposes that China has devised a novel solution, that is, institutional outsourcing, to the central question of how developing states build market-supporting institutions. She is currently an assistant professor in the McDonough School of Business and a faculty affiliate of the Department of Government at Georgetown University.

Congratulations, Shiran and Lizhi, on your excellent work and prestigious awards!

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Ninth Annual Korean Studies Writing Prize Awarded

Won-Gi Jung (BA '20) is awarded the ninth annual Writing Prize in Korean Studies for his paper, "The Making of Chinatown: Chinese migrants and the production of criminal space in 1920s Colonial Seoul."
Ninth Annual Korean Studies Writing Prize Awarded
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Asia Health Policy Program Alum Wins Rothman Epidemiology Prize

Dr. Young Kyung Do, an expert in health policy and management at the Seoul National University College of Healthy Policy and the inaugural postdoctoral fellow in Asia health policy at APARC, has been awarded the 2020 prize for his outstanding publication in the journal Epidemiology last year.
Asia Health Policy Program Alum Wins Rothman Epidemiology Prize
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Shiran Shen (left) and Lizhi Liu (right)
Shiran Shen (left) and Lizhi Liu (right).
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Interdisciplinary environmental scholar Shiran Victoria Shen is the recipient of the Harold D. Lasswell Award and political economist Lizhi Liu is the recipient of the Ronald H. Coase Award in recognition of their outstanding doctoral dissertations.

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Scot Marciel was the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, affiliated with the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center from 2022-2024. Previously, he was a 2020-22 Visiting Scholar and Visiting Practitioner Fellow on Southeast Asia at APARC.  A retired diplomat, Mr. Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar from March 2016 through May 2020, leading a mission of 500 employees during the difficult Rohingya crisis and a challenging time for both Myanmar’s democratic transition and the United States-Myanmar relationship.  Prior to serving in Myanmar, Ambassador Marciel served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department, where he oversaw U.S. relations with Southeast Asia.

From 2010 to 2013, Scot Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country.  He led a mission of some 1000 employees, expanding business ties, launching a new U.S.-Indonesia partnership, and rebuilding U.S.-Indonesian military-military relations.  Prior to that, he served concurrently as the first U.S. Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asia from 2007 to 2010.

Mr. Marciel is a career diplomat with 35 years of experience in Asia and around the world.  In addition to the assignments noted above, he has served at U.S. missions in Turkey, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Brazil and the Philippines.  At the State Department in Washington, he served as Director of the Office of Maritime Southeast Asia, Director of the Office of Mainland Southeast Asia, and Director of the Office of Southern European Affairs.  He also was Deputy Director of the Office of Monetary Affairs in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.

Mr. Marciel earned an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a BA in International Relations from the University of California at Davis.  He was born and raised in Fremont, California, and is married with two children.

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In a webinar dated June 8, 2020, American University in Cairo Scholar Amr Adly presented findings from his new book Cleft Capitalism: The Social Origins of Failed Market Making in Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2020). Egypt has undergone significant economic liberalization under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, USAID, and the European Commission. Yet after more than four decades of economic reform, the Egyptian economy still fails to meet popular expectations for inclusive growth, better standards of living, and high-quality employment. While many analysts point to cronyism and corruption, this study finds the root causes of this stagnation in the underlying social and political conditions of economic development. It offers a new explanation for why market-based development can fail to meet expectations: small businesses in Egypt are not growing into medium and larger businesses. The practical outcome of this missing middle syndrome is the continuous erosion of the economic and social privileges once enjoyed by the middle classes and unionized labor, without creating enough winners from market making. This in turn set the stage for alienation, discontent, and, finally, revolt. With this book, Adly uncovers both an institutional explanation for Egypt's failed market making, and sheds light on the key factors of arrested economic development across the Global South.


 

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In a webinar dated, May 27, 2020, Ohio University Historian Ziad Abu-Rish analyzed the trajectory of Lebanon's Uprising and the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the contemporary political scene. Abu-Rish examined the multiple crises manifesting in Lebanon today and their impact on the fate of the uprising that began in October 2019. While the currency, fiscal, and infrastructural crises were central to the making of Lebanon’s uprising, he argued, the novel strategic innovations that the protesters made were key to shaping its trajectory relative to past protests. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has both exacerbated existing dynamics while also providing respite to the government and some of the traditional political parties. To watch the recording of the talk, please click below.


 

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Railroad regulation in the post-Staggers Act regime compares the revenues earned to a measure of the “variable cost” of the shipment. While revenues are readily observed, the “variable cost” is calculated using the “Uniform Rail Costing System” (URCS) that was developed by the Interstate Commerce Commission. We characterize the properties of the URCS rail costing methodology and its role in rate regulation, and we assess whether it produces an economically valid estimate of the cost caused by a rail shipment. We find that the URCS methodology is an accounting cost allocation procedure that does not recover an estimate of the cost of a rail shipment that a rational railroad operator would use to make pricing or operating decisions. We then explain why in the post-Staggers Act regime, even if an economic meaningful shipment cost measure were available, this information would not come any closer to solving the problem of determining what is an unreasonable price for a railroad to charge. We conclude by arguing that the use of the URCS methodology should be abandoned in railroad rate reasonableness regulation and replaced with a price benchmarking approach.

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Co-sponsored by the King Center on Global Development and Shorenstein APARC, this virtual panel discusses the impacts of the coronavirus pandemics on China's urban and rural employment and its health care sectors. Karen Eggleston, Hongbin Li, Scott Rozelle, and Xueguang Zhou will share their expertise during this critical time as China lifts its lockdown and U.S. cases of COVID-19 ramp up.

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Dr. Karen Eggleston
Karen Eggleston is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University, and director of the Stanford Asia Health Policy Program and deputy director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at FSI. She is also a fellow with the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Eggleston earned her PhD in public policy from Harvard University and has MA degrees in economics and Asian studies from the University of Hawaii and a BA in Asian studies summa cum laude (valedictorian) from Dartmouth College. Eggleston studied in China for two years and was a Fulbright scholar in Korea. Her research focuses on government and market roles in the health sector and Asia health policy, especially in China, India, Japan, and Korea; healthcare productivity; and the economics of the demographic transition. She served on the Strategic Technical Advisory Committee for the Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, and has been a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the WHO regarding health system reforms in the PRC.

 

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Dr. Hongbin Li
Hongbin Li is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, and a senior fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Hongbin Li obtained a PhD in economics from Stanford University in 2001 and joined the economics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he became full professor in 2007. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing 2007-2016 and was C.V. Starr Chair Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Management. He also founded and served as the executive associate director of the China Data Center at Tsinghua. He also co-directs the China Enterprise Survey and Data Center at Wuhan University, which conducts the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES).

 

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Dr. Scott Rozelle
Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of the Rural Education Action Program in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He received his BS from the University of California, Berkeley, and his MS and PhD from Cornell University. Previously, Rozelle was a professor at the University of California, Davis and an assistant professor in Stanford’s Food Research Institute and department of economics. He currently is a member of several organizations, including the American Economics Association, the International Association for Agricultural Economists, and the Association for Asian Studies. Rozelle also serves on the editorial boards of Economic Development and Cultural Change, Agricultural Economics, the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and the China Economic Review.

 

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Dr. Xueguang Zhou
Xueguang Zhou is the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development, a professor of sociology and a Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies senior fellow. His main area of research is institutional changes in contemporary Chinese society, focusing on Chinese organizations and management, social inequality, and state-society relationships. One of his current research projects is a study of the rise of the bureaucratic state in China. He works with students and colleagues to conduct participatory observations of government behaviors in the area of environmental regulation enforcement, in policy implementation, in bureaucratic bargaining, and in incentive designs. With colleagues and students, he also studies patterns of career mobility and personnel flow among different government offices to understand intra-organizational relationships in the Chinese bureaucracy.

 

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Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Center Fellow at the Center for Health Policy and the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research
Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
karen-0320_cropprd.jpg PhD

Karen Eggleston is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Asia Health Policy Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at FSI. She is also a Fellow with the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Her research focuses on government and market roles in the health sector and Asia health policy, especially in China, India, Japan, and Korea; healthcare productivity; and the economics of the demographic transition.

Eggleston earned her PhD in public policy from Harvard University and has MA degrees in economics and Asian studies from the University of Hawaii and a BA in Asian studies summa cum laude (valedictorian) from Dartmouth College. Eggleston studied in China for two years and was a Fulbright scholar in Korea. She served on the Strategic Technical Advisory Committee for the Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and has been a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the WHO regarding health system reforms in the PRC.

Director of the Asia Health Policy Program, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Stanford Health Policy Associate
Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University, June and August of 2016
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Karen Eggleston APARC Deputy Director, Asia Health Policy Program Director Shorenstein APARC
Hongbin Li James Liang Director of the China Program , Senior Fellow (SIEPR) King Center on Global Development

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Faculty Co-director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Helen F. Farnsworth Endowed Professorship
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
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Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University. He received his BS from the University of California, Berkeley, and his MS and PhD from Cornell University. Previously, Rozelle was a professor at the University of California, Davis and an assistant professor in Stanford’s Food Research Institute and department of economics. He currently is a member of several organizations, including the American Economics Association, the International Association for Agricultural Economists, and the Association for Asian Studies. Rozelle also serves on the editorial boards of Economic Development and Cultural Change, Agricultural Economics, the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and the China Economic Review.

His research focuses almost exclusively on China and is concerned with: agricultural policy, including the supply, demand, and trade in agricultural projects; the emergence and evolution of markets and other economic institutions in the transition process and their implications for equity and efficiency; and the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition.

Rozelle's papers have been published in top academic journals, including Science, Nature, American Economic Review, and the Journal of Economic Literature. His book, Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise, was published in 2020 by The University of Chicago Press. He is fluent in Chinese and has established a research program in which he has close working ties with several Chinese collaborators and policymakers. For the past 20 years, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy; a co-director of the University of California's Agricultural Issues Center; and a member of Stanford's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Center on Food Security and the Environment.

In recognition of his outstanding achievements, Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards, including the Friendship Award in 2008, the highest award given to a non-Chinese by the Premier; and the National Science and Technology Collaboration Award in 2009 for scientific achievement in collaborative research.

Faculty affiliate at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
Faculty Affiliate at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
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Scott Rozelle Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow, Co-director of REAP Freeman Spogli Institute

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development
Professor of Sociology
Graduate Seminar Professor at the Stanford Center at Peking University, June and July of 2014
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Xueguang Zhou_0.jpg PhD

Xueguang Zhou is the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development, a professor of sociology, and a Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies senior fellow. His main area of research is on institutional changes in contemporary Chinese society, focusing on Chinese organizations and management, social inequality, and state-society relationships.

One of Zhou's current research projects is a study of the rise of the bureaucratic state in China. He works with students and colleagues to conduct participatory observations of government behaviors in the areas of environmental regulation enforcement, in policy implementation, in bureaucratic bargaining, and in incentive designs. He also studies patterns of career mobility and personnel flow among different government offices to understand intra-organizational relationships in the Chinese bureaucracy.

Another ongoing project is an ethnographic study of rural governance in China. Zhou adopts a microscopic approach to understand how peasants, village cadres, and local governments encounter and search for solutions to emerging problems and challenges in their everyday lives, and how institutions are created, reinforced, altered, and recombined in response to these problems. Research topics are related to the making of markets, village elections, and local government behaviors.

His recent publications examine the role of bureaucracy in public goods provision in rural China (Modern China, 2011); interactions among peasants, markets, and capital (China Quarterly, 2011); access to financial resources in Chinese enterprises (Chinese Sociological Review, 2011, with Lulu Li); multiple logics in village elections (Social Sciences in China, 2010, with Ai Yun); and collusion among local governments in policy implementation (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2011, with Ai Yun and Lian Hong; and Modern China, 2010).

Before joining Stanford in 2006, Zhou taught at Cornell University, Duke University, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a guest professor at Peking University, Tsinghua University, and the People's University of China. Zhou received his Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University in 1991.

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Xueguang Zhouu Senior Fellow Shorenstein APARC
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Data-intensive technologies such as AI may reshape the modern world. We propose that two features of data interact to shape innovation in data-intensive economies: first, states are key collectors and repositories of data; second, data is a non-rival input in innovation. We document the importance of state-collected data for innovation using comprehensive data on Chinese facial recognition AI firms and government contracts. Firms produce more commercial software and patents, particularly data-intensive ones, after receiving government public security contracts. Moreover, effects are largest when contracts provide more data. We then build a directed technical change model to study the state's role in three applications: autocracies demanding AI for surveillance purposes, data-driven industrial policy, and data regulation due to privacy concerns. When the degree of non-rivalry is as strong as our empirical evidence suggests, the state's collection and processing of data can shape the direction of innovation and growth of data-intensive economies.

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Portrait of David Yang
David Yang’s research focuses on political economy, behavioral and experimental economics, economic history, and cultural economics. In particular, David studies the forces of stability and forces of changes in authoritarian regimes, drawing lessons from historical and contemporary China. David received a B.A. in Statistics and B.S. in Business Administration from University of California at Berkeley, and PhD in Economics from Stanford. David is currently a Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at Harvard and a Postdoctoral Fellow at J-PAL at MIT. He also joined Harvard’s Economics Department as an Assistant Professor as of 2020.

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David Yang Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics; Department of Economics, Harvard University
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