英文首页﹀
Bottom-up Institutional Change and Growth in China
2025-02-26
Time: 10:00 am- 11:30 am, Feb. 26th, 2025
Speaker: Xiaodong Zhu
(University of Hong Kong)
Venue: 1F, Wanzhong Building, Langrun Garden, Peking University
Platform: Zoom
Meeting ID: 821 9499 0142
Passcode: 655507
Abstract:
This paper investigates the role of bottom-up reforms in driving China's economic growth. Using granular documentation from county-level gazetteers, we identify local reform events from 1976 to 2005, capturing de facto policy innovations and their diffusion. Our findings show that bottom-up reforms primarily drive growth through productivity improvements, while top-down (centrally sponsored) reforms operate mainly through capital accumulation. Evidence from firm entry and structural transformation further corroborates the productivity-enhancing effects of bottom-up reforms. Notably, these reforms were more likely to originate in politically peripheral regions and the diffusion of these reforms was more driven by local conditions than centrally sponsored reforms.
Speaker:
Xiaodong Zhu is chair professor and head of economics area in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Hong Kong. Prior to joining the University of Hong Kong in 2022, he was full professor of economics at the University of Toronto and taught there for 30 years. His main research areas are Chinese economy, growth and development, and macroeconomics. He is a leading expert on the Chinese economy and his research on China has been published in top economics journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review Insight, Journal of Monetary Economics, International Economic Review, Journal of Development Economics, Review of Economic Dynamics, and Journal of Economic Perspectives. He was a co-editor of the China Economic Review and is on the editorial boards of several other economic journals.