SCID and SCP present a special seminar with Professor Xiaonian Xu

The Chinese economy has grown so fast and for so long. But the “miracle” has started fading in recent years.  Why?  Prof. Xu argues that the reform era can be divided into two fundamentally different phases.  Phase I, from 1978 to the mid-1990s, is characterized by market-oriented reforms, whereas Phase II, from the mid-1990s onward, is dominated by government-led investment and interventions. Though China’s growth performance looks identical in numbers over the two phases, the source of growth has changed from efficiency gains to increased use of resources. Phase II growth is thus unsustainable, and worse, it has brought about structural distortions that severely undermine the economy’s growth potential. To maintain growth even at a moderate level, China needs to go beyond what the leadership has promised and planned.

Dr. Xiaonian Xu is Professor of Economics and Finance at CEIBS. He worked for China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC) since 1999 as Managing Director and Head of Research. The research team under Dr. Xu was ranked No. 1 in 2002 among domestic brokerage firms by Chinese institutional investors. And Dr. Xu himself was voted in the same survey as the best in economics research. Prior to CICC, Dr. Xu was Senior Economist with Merrill Lynch Asia Pacific based in Hong Kong from 1997 to 1998. He worked as a consultant of the World Bank in Washington DC in 1996. Dr. Xu was appointed Assistant Professor of Amherst College, Massachusetts, from 1991 to 1995, teaching Economics and Financial Markets. He was employed by the State Development Research Center of China as a research fellow from 1981 to 1985.
 
Dr. Xu obtained Ph.D. in Economics, University of California, Davis, in 1991, and MA in Industrial Economics in 1981 from People's University of China . He received Sun Yefang Economics Prize in 1996, the highest Chinese award in the field, for his research on China 's capital markets. His research interests include: Macroeconomics, Finance, Financial Institutions and Financial Markets, Transitional Economies, and China 's Economic Reform. Dr. Xu is the recipient of the 2005 and 2006 CEIBS Teaching Excellence Award. Dr. Xu received the prestigious CEIBS Medal for Teaching Excellence in 2010. 

A year has passed since the Japanese government embarked on the new economic policy package called “Abenomics” with three “arrows”: aggressive monetary easing, flexible fiscal policy, and a growth strategy. The package is designed to bring the Japanese economy out of 20 years of stagnation and 15 years of deflation, and put it on a sustainable growth path. How effective has the policy package been during the first year of the Abe administration?  Will it succeed in bringing sustainable growth to Japan?  Professor Takatoshi Ito, a prominent expert on the Japanese economy, tackles these questions.

Takatoshi Ito, Professor at Faculty of Economics and Dean of Graduate School of Public
Policy, University of Tokyo, has taught extensively both in the United States and Japan,
including at University of Minnesota, Hitotsubashi University, and Harvard University.
He held visiting professor positions at Harvard University (1986-87 and 1992-94), Stanford
University (as National Fellow; 1984-85); Columbia Business School (fall semester, 2009),
and Tun Ismail Ali Chair Professor at University of Malaya (summer semester, 2008). His
public sector experiences include Senior Advisor in the Research Department, IMF
(1994-97); Deputy Vice Minister for International Affaires at Ministry of Finance
(1999-2001); and a member of the Prime Minister’s Council of Economic and Fiscal
Policy (2006-08). He is an author of many books including The Japanese Economy (MIT
Press), The Political Economy of the Japanese Monetary Policy (MIT Press), and
Financial Policy and Central Banking in Japan (MIT Press), and more than 50
refereed academic journal articles on international finance and the Japanese economy,
including ones in American Economic Review and Econometrica. He has distinguished
academic and research appointments such as President of the Japanese Economic
Association in 2004; Fellow of Econometric Society, since 1992; Research Associate at
National Bureau of Economic Research since 1985; and Faculty Fellow, Centre for
Economic Policy Research, since 2006. His research interest includes capital flows and
currency crises, microstructures of the foreign exchange rates, and inflation targeting. He
contributes frequently op-ed columns and articles to Financial Times, Nihon Keizai Shinbun,
Mainichi Shinbun, and Toyo Keizai Weekly.

We use retrospectively reported data on smoking behavior of residents of Mainland China and Taiwan to compare and contrast patterns in smoking behavior over the life-course of individuals in these two regions. Because we construct the life-history of smoking for all survey respondents, our data cover an exceptionally long period of time – up to fifty years in both samples. During this period, both societies experienced substantial social and economic changes. The two regions developed at much different rates and the political systems of the two areas evolved in very different ways. More importantly, governments in the two areas set policies that caused the flow of information about the health risks of smoking to differ across the regions and over time. We exploit these differences, using counts of articles in newspapers from 1951 to present, to explore whether and how the arrival of information affected life-course smoking decisions of residents in the two areas. We also present evidence that suggests how prices/taxes and key historical events might have affected decisions to smoke.

Dean Lillard received his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1991. From 1991 to 2012, he was a faculty member and senior research associate in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. In August 2012 he joined the Department Human Sciences at Ohio State University as an Associate Professor. He is Director and Project Manager of the Cross-National Equivalent File study that produces cross-national data. He is a member of the American Economics Association, the Population Association of America, the International Association for Research on Income and Wealth, the International Health Economics Association, the American Society for Health Economics, a Research Associate at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, Germany, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He serves on the advisory board of the Danish National Institute for Social Research in Copenhagen, Denmark and the Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program – a collaborative program run by the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), and together with the Mershon Centre at OSU.

Dean Lillard's current research focuses on health economics, the economics of schooling, and international comparisons of economic behavior. His research in health economics is primarily focused on the economics of the marketing and consumption of cigarettes and alcohol. His research on the economics of schooling includes studies of direct effects of policy on educational outcomes and on the role that education plays in other economic behaviors such as smoking, production of health, and earnings. His cross-national research ranges widely from comparisons of the role that obesity plays in determining labor market outcomes to comparisons of smoking behavior cross-nationally.