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2019 Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture

Featuring Xu Chenggang, Professor of Economics, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business

Event Details:

Thursday, March 28, 2019
4:30pm - 6:00pm PDT

Location

Stanford Green Library, Bender Room
Xu Chenggang
Government and Institutions

On March 28, Stanford Libraries and the Stanford King Center on Global Development were pleased to present the 2019 Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture featuring Professor Xu Chenggang who will be speaking on "Institutional Genes: A Comparative Analysis of Origins of China’s Institutions."

Professor Xu lectured on a book project which studies the origins of contemporary China’s institutions and addressed other intimately related questions: What are the features of China’s fundamental institutions? What are the origins of these institutions? How and why have these institutions evolved in the ways we observe? Why the Chinese endeavors of establishing constitutionalism since the late 19th century ended up with a Soviet type of totalitarian regime in the mid-twentieth century? What are the perspectives of institutional changes and related issues in the future?

Professor Xu's analysis compares China’s institutions and their evolutions with their counterparts in the rest of the world, such as the Chinese Empire, the Roman Empire, the European feudal systems, constitutional revolutions/reforms, and the Japanese Empire and its Meiji Restoration, etc. Particular attention is paid to Russian institutions as he argues that the institutional genes of contemporary China’s institutions are composed of those from the Chinese Empire and those from the Soviet Union. A more general question on the origins of totalitarianism in Russia is a central question thus has to be addressed as well. This is a multi-disciplinary work, involving economics, political science, law, and history. The concept of institutional genes is derived from institutional design theory. Most of the subjects to be analyzed and most evidence to be provided are historical facts.

 

About the speaker:

Xu Chenggang

Xu Chenggang is Professor of Economics at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. He is one of the first recipients (joint with Yingyi Qian) of China Economics Prize for contributions in understanding government and enterprise incentive mechanisms for the transition economy of China. Xu received his PhD in Economics from Harvard in 1991. He is currently a board member of the Ronald Coase Institute (RCI) and a research fellow of the CEPR. He has previously taught at the London School of Economics (1991-2009) as a Reader, at the University of Hong Kong (2009-2016) as Chung Hon-Dak Professor in Economic Development and as Quoin Professor in Economic Development (2008-2016), and as Special-Term Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University (2002-).

About the Memorial Lecture:

The family of Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh donated his personal archive to the Stanford Libraries' Special Collections and endowed the Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture series to honor his legacy and to inspire future generations. Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh (1919-2004) was former Governor of the Central Bank in Taiwan. During his tenure, he was responsible for the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, and was widely recognized for achieving stability and economic growth. In his long and distinguished career as economist and development specialist, he held key positions in multilateral institutions including the Asian Development Bank, where as founding Director, he was instrumental in advancing the green revolution and in the transformation of rural Asia.

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