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Title:
Can China Sustain Rapid Growth Despite Flawed Institutions?
Professor Thomas G. Rawski (Professor of Economics and History, University of Pittsburgh)
May 27, 2010
5:30 pm
Venue:
Room 602, 6/F, Meng Wah Complex, The University of Hong Kong
Language:
English
Enquiry:
Mr. Francis Cheng
(Tel) (852) 2241-5056
(Email) ihss@hku.hk
China’s unusual combination of gradual market-leaning reform, accelerated growth and dubious institutions undercuts important strands of economic thinking emphasizing the importance of private ownership, full price flexibility, and “good” institutions in stimulating sustained growth of output, productivity, and incomes. The same circumstances raise the question of whether institutional flaws will slow or stall China’s growth machine. Despite well-known institutional shortcomings, the author finds that China’s economy harbors institutional strengths inherited from the period of socialist planning and also from the pre-socialist era, that these strengths substantially offset the negative impact of present-day institutional arrangements, and that institutional flaws therefore seem unlikely to undercut the economy’s forward momentum. In China, unlike most economies, readily available metrics allow outsiders to track the progress of institutional improvement.
Thomas G. Rawski is the Professor of Economics and History and UCIS Research Professor at University of Pittsburgh, and has been on the faculty since 1985. His research focuses on the nature and implications of recent developments and long term changes in the economy of China. He held grants and fellowships from the Henry Luce Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council and Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, just to name a few.
Rawski is currently the elected member of China and Inner Asia Council of Association for Asian Studies. He served and is serving on the editorial board of several first class academic journals, including China Reviews International (1994 –), China Economic Review (1995 –) and China Quarterly (1991 – 2009). He is also the contributor, author, or editor of ten books, including recent publications China’s Great Economic Transformation (co-ed. Loren Brandt), Cambridge University Press, 2008 and China’s Rise and the Balance of Influence in Asia (co-ed. William Keller), University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007.
