Bios of Scientific Committee

Chong-En Bai is the Dean of the School of Economics and Management and Mansfield Freeman Chair Professor of Economics at Tsinghua University. He is also the Director of the National Institute for Fiscal Studies of Tsinghua University. He earned his Ph.D. degrees in Mathematics and Economics from UCSD and Harvard University, respectively. His research interests include economic institutions, economic growth and development, public economics, and the Chinese economy.

Professor Bai is a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the monetary policy committee of the People’s Bank of China, the Chinese Economists 50 Forum, the China Finance 40 Forum, and the executive committee of International Economic Association. He served as Adjunct Vice-President of Beijing State-Owned Assets Management Co., was a member of the “13th Five-Year National Development Plan” Expert Committee and a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution.

Ruixue Jia is an Associate Professor of Economics at UC San Diego, where she focuses her research on the political economy, development economics, economic history and China.

She uses organization theory to closely examine the incentives of politicians, particularly to understand how such incentives affect growth, the environment and workplace safety. She has researched what determines the selection of politicians in China and how the incentives for politicians affect pollution and coal mine accidents.

Additionally, Professor Jia has investigated the importance of historical events that implicated economic development. Using historical data, she has researched the long-run development paths of treaty ports and looked at the impact of weather shocks on peasant revolts. In 2014, She organized a multidisciplinary conference on China’s political economy with UC San Diego and Tsinghua University.

Hongbin Li is the Co-director of Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).

Professor Li obtained Ph.D. 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 Social and Economic Data Center at Tsinghua University. He founded the Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) in 2009 and the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) in 2014.

Professor Li’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world.

He is the current editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics (2017), an associate editor of Economic Development and Cultural Change, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Comparative Economics and China Economic Review, as well as on the editorial advisory board for the Journal of Economic Perspectives and China Agricultural Economic Review. He received the Changjiang Scholarship in 2009, the National Award for Distinguished Young Scientists in China in 2010, and the McKinsey Young Economist Research Paper Award in 2012. He is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics in Germany and a senior research fellow at the J. Mirrlees Institute of Economic Policy Research.

Yao Amber Li ’s research interests include technology transfer, innovation, quality upgrading, FDI, agglomeration, TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), and in particular, heterogeneous firms in emerging economies, based on microeconomic evidence from developing countries, especially from China. She worked as a research fellow in Planning Research Institute, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (previously, Ministry of Information Industry) of China between 2003 and 2005. She has participated in a series of China’s national research projects. She was one of the main framers and revisers of several China’s national industrial policies (digital TV, integrated circuits, software, etc.), and major policies regarding FDI, exporting, industrial agglomeration and economic development zones for Chinese government. During her PhD study, she joined several research projects sponsored by a national think-tanker, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI, Canada). She holds a BA (2001) and an MA (2003) in Economics from Peking University (P.R. China) and a PhD (2010) in Economics from University of Western Ontario (UWO, Canada). She received a First-Prize National Award for Research Excellence issued by Ministry of Commerce of China in 2004 and the TM Brown Thesis Prize for best doctoral dissertation in Economics at UWO in 2010.

Yi Lu is a Professor of Economics at School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University. Before joined Tsinghua, he taught at University of Hong Kong as research assistant professor, and then National University of Singapore as assistant professor and tenured associate professor. He received BS in biology and MA in economics from Fudan University, and PhD in economics from University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on Chinese economy, including public finance, international trade, and economic development.

Juanjuan Meng is a professor of Department of Applied Economics at Guanghua School of Management, Peking University. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics from University of California San Diego. She is currently serving as the associate editor of Management Science.

Dr. Meng’s current research interests include Behavior Economics and Behavior Finance. Her research has been published in American Economic Review, Management Science, Journal of Public Economics, International Economic Review, Journal of Development Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Juanjuan Meng has received financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China for The Outstanding and Excellent Young Scholar, National Natural Science Foundation of China (General project and youth project) and Beijing Higher Education Young Elite Teacher Project.

Albert Park is a development and labor economist who is an expert on China’s economic development. He is Head and Chair Professor of Economics, Chair Professor of Social Science, and Professor of Public Policy at HKUST. Professor Park is a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London), the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA, Bonn), the International Growth Centre (Oxford/LSE/DFID), and the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group (Chicago). In recent years he has published articles in leading economics journals on firm performance, poverty and inequality, migration and employment, health and education, and the economics of aging in China. He serves on the editorial boards of the World Bank Economic Review, Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press Elements Series in the Economics of Emerging Markets, and China Policy Journal. Prof. Park has played a leadership role in numerous survey research projects in China including the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES), the China Urban Labor Survey (CULS), the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF), and the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). He previously held faculty appointments at the University of Michigan and Oxford University, and has consulted frequently for the World Bank. His research and commentary has appeared in the Economist, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Freakonomics, and NPR.

Gérard Roland joined the Berkeley faculty as a professor in 2001. He received his PhD from Universite Libre de Bruxelles in 1988 and taught there from 1988-2001. Professor Roland is also a CEPR research fellow, where he was program director between 1995 and 2006 as well as a NBER research associate. He served as editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics, and was an associate editor for several other journals.

Among Professor Roland’s awards and honors are recipient of the Medal of the University of Helsinki, Officier de l’Ordre de Leopold II, and entry in “Who’s Who in the World,” “Who’s Who in America,” and Who’s Who in Economics since 1776.” He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences in Stanford in 1998-1999. He was program chair of the Fifth Nobel symposium in Economics devoted to the Economics of Transition in 1999. He was named Jean Monnet Professor at Universite Libre de Bruxelles in 2001 and received an Honorary Professorship of Renmin University of China in 2002.

Zheng Michael Song is Wei Lun Professor of Economics and the Head of the Department of Economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), a Co-Director of CUHK-Tsinghua Joint Research Center for Chinese Economy, a Co-Director of CUHK-Zhejiang University Joint Research Center for Digital Economy and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University. He received B.A. from Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade (1997), M.A. from Fudan University (2000) and Ph.D. from Stockholm University (2005). Before joining CUHK, he was an Assistant/Associate Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth (2011-15), a Visiting Scholar/Assistant Professor of Economics at CUHK (2009-11) and a Research Fellow at Fudan University (2005-09). He is a Senior Fellow of ABFER and a Fellow of Luohan Academy. His research focuses on Chinese economy and macroeconomics. His papers were published by leading academic journals including American Economic Review, Econometrica and Journal of Political Economy. He won Sunyefang Economic Science Award in 2013. He is an Associate Editor of Econometrica, Review of Finance and was a Co-Editor of China Economic Review. He sits on a number of academic advisory boards such as China’s Economics Foundation and Hong Kong Institute for Monetary and Financial Research.

Heiwai Tang is Professor of Economics at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Prior to HKU, he was tenured Associate Professor of International Economics at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is also Research Fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the Center of Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESIfo) in Germany, and the Globalization and Economic Policy Center in the U.K. He has been a consultant to the World Bank, International Finance Corporation, United Nations, and Asian Development Bank, and held visiting positions at the IMF, Stanford University, MIT Sloan School of Management, Harvard University, and RIETI. He is on the editorial boards of Journal of International Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics, and China Economic Review.

Professor Tang received his Ph.D. in economics from MIT and undergraduate degree in mathematics from UCLA. His research interests span a wide range of theoretical and empirical topics in international trade, with a specific focus on production networks and global value chains. His research has been published in leading journals in economics, including American Economic Review, Journal of International Economics, and Journal of Development Economics. He has also written articles for Financial Times, Foreign Policy, the Brookings Institution, and the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Daniel Yi Xu is a Professor of Economics at Duke University and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics. He is also an associate editor of the Economic Journal, the Journal of Industrial Economics, the Journal of International Economics, Quantitative Economics, the Rand Journal of Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics.

Professor Xu’s research focuses on Productivity, International Trade, and Industrial Organization. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries, and the NET Institute. His most recent work has been published in the Rand Journal of Economics, the World Bank Economic Review, the American Economic Review and the Review of Economic Dynamics. He is currently working on projects that explore innovation, productivity, exporting and industry dynamics, with a special focus on East Asian emerging economies such as China, Taiwan, and Korea.

Xiaobo Zhang is a distinguished chair professor of economics at the National School of Development, Peking University in China, and senior research fellow of IFPRI. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University. His research fields include agricultural economics, development economics, and Chinese economy. He is the Chief Editor of China Economic Review. He received Sun Yefang Prize for Economics Research in China (the most prestigious award in the field of economics in China) and Zhang Peigang Development Economics Outstanding Achievement Award (the highest award in the field of development economics). He is a co-PI of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) survey and PI of Enterprise Survey for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in China (ESIEC).

Yifan Zhang is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received B.A. and M.A. from Renmin University of China and Ph.D. from University of Pittsburgh. He worked at Lingnan University before joining CUHK in 2015. He is an external affiliate faculty of Cornell Institute for China Economic Research, and an associate editor of China Economic Review. He has been a consultant for the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia.

Prof. Zhang’s research interests include international trade and economic development. His recent research has investigated the impacts of globalization forces such as trade and FDI on the performance of Chinese firms.

Li-An Zhou is the Associate Dean and Professor of Applied Economics in Guanghua School of Management at Peking University. Professor Zhou received his BA and MA in economics from Peking University, and his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. He joined Guanghua as an Assistant Professor in 2002 and became a full Professor in 2010.

His research interests include political economy, industrial organization, economic development, and Chinese economy. Professor Zhou has published papers in economics and management journals including Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Health Economics, and Strategic Management Journal. He is also the author of the book Incentives and Governance: China’s Local Governments (Cengage Learning, 2010).