Stanford University

Student Seminar | March 5, 2027

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About the Student Seminar Series


Our Student Seminar Series offers emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each seminar features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Student Seminars are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Student Seminar Series webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Learn More About the Student Seminar Series

Goldman Conference Room, Encina Hall, E409

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Student Seminar | February 12, 2027

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About the Student Seminar Series


Our Student Seminar Series offers emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each seminar features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Student Seminars are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Student Seminar Series webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Learn More About the Student Seminar Series

Goldman Conference Room, Encina Hall, E409

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Neil Rogachevsky — Israel's Declaration of Independence: Founding Values and Contemporary Debates

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Israel's Declaration of Independence is its most important political text. It is, in fact, the only official text from Israel's founding moment that speaks to foundational subjects of statecraft: the nature of sovereignty, the relationship between religion and state, and the rights of citizens. This presentation will explore the history of drafting Israel's Declaration of Independence and the sometimes-clashing efforts of its multiple drafters to define Israel's character in 1948. It will pay special attention to the contribution of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who fundamentally transformed the proposed text of Israel's Declaration, producing a quite different final version in the days before May 14, 1948. Finally, it will consider whether Israel's Declaration of Independence might serve as a text of "civil religion" for Israel today.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Neil Rogachevsky is Assistant Professor in the Hamilton School, having previously taught at Yeshiva University. His research concerns Israeli political thought and history, comparative constitutionalism, and Jewish history.

With Dov Zigler, Rogachevsky is the co-author of Israel’s Declaration of Independence: The History and Political Theory of the Nation’s Founding Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2023), which won that year’s Concordia-Azrieli prize for Best Book in Israel Studies. He is currently at work on a new book on the political thought of David Ben-Gurion, which is slated to appear with Cambridge University Press in 2027.

Rogachevsky’s scholarship has also appeared or is forthcoming in Israel Studies Review, Shofar, The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, French History, and edited volumes on Michel Houellebecq’s political thought from Brill and diaspora politics in the United States from NYU Press. Rogachevsky also writes widely for general-interest and policy journals including the Wall Street Journal, Mosaic, Jewish Review of Books, The National Interest, The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, First Things, and American Affairs.

Amichai Magen
Amichai Magen

Registration required. Virtual to Public. If prompted for a password, use: 123456.
Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to Encina Hall E409 (Goldman Conference Room) may attend in person. 

Neil Rogachevsky
Seminars
Israel Studies
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Student Seminar | January 29, 2027

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About the Student Seminar Series


Our Student Seminar Series offers emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each seminar features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Student Seminars are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Student Seminar Series webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Learn More About the Student Seminar Series

Goldman Conference Room, Encina Hall, E409

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Student Seminar | Discipline without Slack: Anti-Corruption in China's Health Sector

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Discipline without Slack: Anti-Corruption in China's Health Sector


Speaker: Victoria Liu, PhD student, Stanford University

Anti-corruption reforms are expected to improve public services by reducing waste and private extraction, yet services do not always improve even when corruption is genuinely constrained. This chapter argues that the service outcome depends on how corruption was organized before reform. When corrupt exchange becomes repeated and embedded in organizational roles, it can generate discretionary resources and trusted relationships that help public organizations operate despite weaknesses in their formal support systems. Such corruption remains costly and distorting, but removing it may also disrupt the informal capacity that had sustained routine work. I examine this argument in China's health sector, where the National Volume-Based Procurement program and the 2023 anti-corruption campaign constrained drug-related corruption. Province-level expenditure data from 2010 to 2023 show that outpatient care did not become more affordable and that expenditure rose more where hospitals had relied more heavily on the drug-centered system weakened by reform. Firm records and field interviews provide complementary evidence that the reforms disrupted both financial and relational supports. The findings show that suppressing corruption and building the formal capacity needed to replace it are separate political tasks.

About the Student Seminar Series


Our Student Seminar Series offers emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each seminar features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Student Seminars are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Student Seminar Series webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Learn More About the Student Seminar Series

Goldman Conference Room, Encina Hall, E409

Seminars
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Student Seminar | The Efficiency of Public Service Outsourcing: Evidence from Judicial Auctions in China

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The Efficiency of Public Service Outsourcing: Evidence from Judicial Auctions in China

 

Speaker:  Zhiren Hu, IvyPlus Graduate Student, Economics for Sustainability and Energy Transition Research Program, Stanford University

 

About the Student Seminar Series


Our Student Seminar Series offers emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each seminar features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Student Seminars are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Student Seminar Series webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Learn More About the Student Seminar Series

Goldman Conference Room, Encina Hall, E409

Seminars
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Directional AI Advice: Experimental Evidence from Healthcare

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Meng 10222026

Generative AI is fast becoming the first-place people turn for expert advice. The advice it provides can be directional rather than neutral, shaped in part by the choices of its designers and regulators. When clients consult AI before meeting an expert, they carry this directional advice into a relationship that once rested on the expert’s judgment alone. We study its consequences in healthcare through a large-scale preregistered field experiment at a Chinese hospital, where we randomize patients’ access to an AI chatbot before their outpatient visit. Examination of the conversation logs shows that the chatbot routinely cautions against the use of medications, especially Traditional Chinese Medicine and antibiotics, while issuing clean recommendations for diagnostic testing, consistent with the liability-driven guardrails encoded in AI training. This directionality propagates into clinical practice. Prescription rates decline among treated patients while diagnostic testing increases, and these effects are more pronounced among physicians who are receptive to patient input and those with more intensive prescribing styles. Beyond shifting healthcare utilization, survey results show that AI access reduces patient compliance and satisfaction, shifting the balance of authority between patients and physicians.

Speaker: Lingsheng Meng is a Senior Research Scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI). His research interests are in the fields of labor economics, development economics, and public economics. So far, the bulk of his work is highly empirical and concerned with six main areas: (1) social mobility; (2) inequality; (3) gender disparities; (4) the role of government; (5) political connections; (5) higher education; (6) the US-China trade war. His work appeared in the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, the Journal of Development Economics, and other peer-reviewed journals. Lingsheng received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland at College Park in 2010, an M.Phil. in Economics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2004, and a B.A. in Economics and Thai from Peking University in 2002. Before joining Stanford, he taught at Tsinghua University from 2010 to 2017 and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2017 to 2022.

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Lingsheng Meng, Senior Research Scholar, Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI)
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Authoritarian Markets: The Politics of China’s Banking Explosion

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Adam Liu 11172026

Conventional wisdom holds that banking markets flourish where property rights are secure, the rule of law is strong, and the state keeps its hands off. China has none of these. Yet over the past three decades, the number of Chinese banks grew exponentially, and competition became fierce. Why? In Authoritarian Markets: The Politics of China’s Banking Explosion (Cornell University Press, 2026), Adam Y. Liu argues that China’s banking market grew not despite authoritarian rule but because of it. The banking sector, he argues, is a market of the state, by the state, and for the state. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork and an extensive array of original data, Liu uncovers the political logic of banking market development in China and authoritarian states more broadly and explores what this means for the future of China’s economy.

Speaker: Adam Y. Liu is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. His research focuses on Chinese politics and political economy. He earned his PhD from Stanford University, where his dissertation on the politics of China's banking development won the 2020 BRICS Economic Research Award.

 

Directions and Parking > 

Philippines Conference Room (C330)
Encina Hall, 3rd Floor
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

Adam Y. Liu, Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore
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Ukraine: An Update from the Ground

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10.14.26_UkraineEvent

The war in Ukraine is in its 5th year, and casualties continue to mount. How did we get here? And how does this war end? This presentation and discussion will cover the latest military developments, as well as a review of the economic and political factors that will determine how strong Ukraine, Russia, and Europe will be going into negotiations.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Alexandra Vacroux is Vice President for Strategic Engagement at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE). Her scholarly work has focused on Russia, and heavily on the war against Ukraine. Before moving to Ukraine in 2024, she served as Executive Director at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Alexandra holds a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University. Her dissertation considered informal institutions and corruption in Russia’s pharmaceutical markets and emerged from her experience living in Moscow from 1992 to 2004.

Yevhenii Malik is a former Marine Infantry sergeant in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and a veteran of the Ukraine War. He has extensive frontline experience, including in the 2022 battle for Mariupol. From April 2022 to September 2024, he endured captivity in Russia. Malik is an advocate for Ukraine’s armed forces and veterans and is responsible for undergraduate national security and defense programs at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE). 

Kathryn Stoner
Kathryn Stoner

Only those with an active Stanford ID and access to the William J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. Others may attend virtually, via Zoom.

Registration required.

Alexandra Vacroux
Yevhenii Malik
Seminars
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Student Seminar | Jobs or Rents? Where International Student Inflows Land in Local Economies

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Jobs or Rents? Where International Student Inflows Land in Local Economies


Speaker: Danyue Liang, Visiting PhD Student, University of New South Wales and Economics

About the Student Seminar Series


Our Student Seminar Series offers emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each seminar features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Student Seminars are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Student Seminar Series webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Learn More About the Student Seminar Series

Goldman Conference Room, Encina Hall, E409

Seminars
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