Ding Lu - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Ding Lu

Economics, the study of optimal use of society’s scarce resources, plays a key role in program ev... more Economics, the study of optimal use of society’s scarce resources, plays a key role in program evaluation. Application of concepts and analytical framework in several economics fields has enhanced the rigour of program evaluation methods. This paper goes through the evaluation logic model to review and highlight the key aspects of program evaluation where modern economics has provided crucial insights and practical research tools. The rising importance of economics applied to program evaluation has far reaching implications on the latter’s profession development and its education agenda.

The Great Urbanization of China, 2012

More than one tenth of China's total population has become the socalled floating population, cons... more More than one tenth of China's total population has become the socalled floating population, consisting of mostly rural migrants who are away from their place of household registration for more than six months. Migration improves the efficiency of interregional resource allocation and enhances the welfare of residents in both the poor and rich regions. However, massive migration from low-income regions to high-income regions redistributes the so-called demographic dividends across regions by restructuring regional demographics. The poor regions with net outward migration thus face a major challenge regarding how to maximize the benefits of labor mobility and control its negative impact on their economies. * Reprinted and revised from EAI Background Briefs, No. 399 (2008).

SSRN Electronic Journal

The send-down movement refers to the rustication program run by the Chinese government to send mi... more The send-down movement refers to the rustication program run by the Chinese government to send millions of urban youth to live and work in the countryside in the 1960s and the 1970s. The movement reached its peak during the Cultural

Economic Systems, 1998

Credit-quota plan is an important feature of the post-reform Chinese banking system. The performa... more Credit-quota plan is an important feature of the post-reform Chinese banking system. The performance records of the credit-quota control, however, did not justify it as an effective instrument for macroeconomic management. Factors that have undermined its effectiveness include state banks' obligation to support state-owned enterprises, regional governments' symbiotic relationship with the local bank branches, and the growing autonomy of financial institutions. A series of social-economic developments in recent years have further eroded the effectiveness of the credit quota control and made it increasingly costly a policy instrument to keep. Time is ripe for China to switch to a central banking system based on fractional reserves and open market operations. (JEL E52, P21, O53)

Frontiers of Economics in China, 2014

China Economic Review, 2001

China's industrial policy regime has played an important role in the country's economic developme... more China's industrial policy regime has played an important role in the country's economic development and participation in the world economy. This paper examines the effect of this regime on cross-industry resource allocation in three aspects: incentives, openness of trade and investment, and allocative efficiency. The results indicate effectiveness of industrial policy in offering incentives and controlling market openness in line with the planned priority. Evidence in cross-industry resource allocation, however, suggests significant efficiency gains are yet to be obtained from further participation in globalization.

Asian Economic Papers, Feb 5, 2009

Factor mobility plays an important role in the convergence of regional income levels. This paper ... more Factor mobility plays an important role in the convergence of regional income levels. This paper examines the role of labor mobility in China's regional economic development in the context of phases of demographic transition and the existence of institutional barriers. Our findings show that the two most important sources of interregional income disparity are per worker capital stock and technology level. The fact that the richest provincial economies are at the later phase of demographic transition provides a major reason for why those economies have accumulated higher per worker capital stock and achieved higher productivity levels. We also discover that regional per capita income levels have not displayed convergence since the mid 1990s. Two observations explain this phenomenon. One observation is that capital and labor movements have played only a limited role in equalizing their marginal returns across regions despite the fact that labor mobility has substantially strengthened this role since 2000. The other observation is that the impact of demographic changes on income growth has been distinctly uneven between the rich and poor regions. This phenomenon can be attributed to some particular features of China's interregional labor migration. * I would like to thank Siow Yue Chia, Harry X. Wu, and participants of AEP Conference, Seoul, April 2008, for their valuable comments and suggestions.

China Economic Review, 2003

The rise of China as an economic powerhouse has caused concerns in its neighbors. Prevailing in t... more The rise of China as an economic powerhouse has caused concerns in its neighbors. Prevailing in the region is the fear that China is becoming a gigantic ''regional factory'' that will ''hollow out'' neighboring economies' industries. In this paper, we emphasize the economic benefits that a rising Chinese economy can bring into the region. A discussion on the country's growth strategy suggests that China has recently started shifting from an export-oriented economy to a more domesticdemand-driven one. Such a shift, in the backdrop of China's entry into the World Trade Organization, is opening up the country's huge domestic market for imports, thus providing great opportunities for the regional economies. A custom-made structural VAR analysis based on tradelinks in the region provides empirical evidence that China had quickly emerged as a growth engine in the region even before China joined the WTO and made a full transformation of its growth model.

Economics of Transition, Feb 5, 2008

Using data on China's provincial economies for the period 1978 -2005, we decomposed the causes an... more Using data on China's provincial economies for the period 1978 -2005, we decomposed the causes and factors that have contributed to inter-regional per capita income disparity. Variance in capital per employee and variance in capital elasticity are found to be the two main sources of income disparity while the employment-labour force ratio is shown to be an important factor in containing the rise of income disparity. An analysis on inter-regional factor reallocation effects reveals their relatively small and insignificant contributions to overall growth performance. It is also discovered that capital has in most years flowed in the right direction to pursue higher marginal productivity across provincial economies. Inter-provincial labour movement, on the other hand, had not displayed significant equilibrating effects until institutional reforms started to allow freer inter-regional labour mobility in later years. Generally, we conclude that market-oriented factor mobility has played a crucial role in equalizing factor returns as well as enhancing growth efficiency across regions.

Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger, eds. Deregulation and Interdependence in the Asia-Pacific Region, , 2000

China Economic Review, 2002

Historical data of economic development suggest a Kuznets-Williamson type of relationship between... more Historical data of economic development suggest a Kuznets-Williamson type of relationship between economic growth and income disparity. Using China's provincial data, we first try to determine to what extent such a relationship is valid in the urban-rural disparity context. Next, we identify some factors other than economic growth that might have affected urban-rural disparity. In particular, we calculate and compare the inter-sector gross allocation effect (GAE) at the provincial level to discern the impact of labor mobility and allocative efficiency on urban-rural disparity. We also try to evaluate the contribution of local governance to urban-rural disparity by looking into regional differences in effectiveness of economic growth to raise local standard of living. Policy implications of the findings are discussed in the light of China's institutional reforms and development strategies.

Climate and Development, 2015

Reduction of carbon dioxide emission is of great significance to the sustainability of global dev... more Reduction of carbon dioxide emission is of great significance to the sustainability of global development. For the developing countries, however, carbon reduction is perceived costly for its possible dampening effect on economic growth. This paper builds a Low-Carbon Development Index to assess the potentials for an economy to improve environmental efficiency of its development by reducing carbon dioxide emission while still achieving economic growth. Applying the index to a data set of 30 Chinese provincial economies from for the period 1998 to 2012, we evaluate the environmental efficiency of China's economic development in terms of carbon dioxide emission and discuss whether it is economically feasible for the country to reduce the country's carbon intensity by 40-45% from the level of 2005, a target committed by its government at the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference (COP15).

Frontiers of Economics in China, Sep 23, 2014

China's rise as a global economic power in recent decades has been achieved with tremendous envir... more China's rise as a global economic power in recent decades has been achieved with tremendous environmental costs. Has China been an abnormally heavier polluter in its development path? How has pollution accounted for China's hyper economic growth? This study answers these questions by evaluating the environmental effects of China's growth using a data set of 61 countries over a period of four decades. The analysis is focused on two pollutant emissions: CO 2 emissions, which carry global externalities, and particulate emissions, of which the environmental cost is more domestic. A fractional polynomial (FP) regression model is estimated to project emissions levels per worker based on lagged values of per capita GDP and other variables. It reveals that China's CO 2 emissions have been higher than the projection for most years with an average margin of over 5.3% while its particulate emissions have exceeded projection by an average margin of more than 7.5%. The excessive emissions levels of both pollutants confirm the severity of China's environmental challenges and indicate great potential for the economy to work for a greener growth pattern. On the other hand, contributions of emissions to multi-factor productivity (MFP) growth are estimated by FP regressions based on a human-capital augmented growth model. The results show opposing trends of CO 2 and particulates in their "contributions" to GDP growth, which imply asymmetric incentives to abate the two types of pollution. These findings have important implications for China's environmental policy making.

East Asian Policy, 2015

China has taken a series of proactive measures to prevent and control air pollution. The Air Poll... more China has taken a series of proactive measures to prevent and control air pollution. The Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (2013) includes main policy initiatives to improve national and regional air quality. Fiscal reforms are needed to fund clean-air technology and incentivise firms and households to reduce pollution and economise energy use. The War on Smog requires high-level coordination of governments at different levels and various local jurisdictions.

Based on the data of six major sectors and 13 industrial sectors of the Chinese economy, this stu... more Based on the data of six major sectors and 13 industrial sectors of the Chinese economy, this study examines the impact of sectoral factor reallocation on productivity growth for the period 1986-2000. According to the results, the earlier post-reform high productivity growth was not sustained in more recent years. The overall performance of inter-sector reallocation was also disappointing. Limited improvements in productivity growth were observed for the industrial sectors as China beefed up reforms of state-owned enterprises in the late 1990s. This evidence highlights the huge potential gains for a developing economy like China to build sound market institutions in line with greater market openness and inter-sector factor mobility.

China’s West Region Development: Domestic Strategies and Global Implications, 2004

China has been the world's fastest growing economy in the last two decades, in which its total GD... more China has been the world's fastest growing economy in the last two decades, in which its total GDP sextupled. This remarkable economic growth has been, however, mainly a coastal phenomenon. The country's western inland region, with a total area of 6.85 million km (71.4% of the whole nation), was largely left out of the boom. While its population (367 million by 2002) accounts for 28.8% of China's total, its share of the national GDP is under 17%. The per capita income of the western region is less than 40% of the level in the eastern region. At the turn of the century, the Chinese government launched the West China Development Program, aiming to reorient the growth vigour towards the western region. A series of fiscal initiatives and institutional innovations have been proposed and implemented to boost the region's development prospects and close the income gaps between the western inland provinces and the rest of China. In the first three years of this program, 36 mega infrastructure projects with investment over 600 billion yuan (equivalent to US$ 72 billion) have taken off. China's banking sector has increased another 600 billion yuan of loans to the provinces in the western region. 1 To Chinese policy makers, the development of the west region is meant to reduce interregional disparities and to meet both environmental protection and national security goals. Outside of China's borders, the effects of this development will be far-reaching, both regionally and globally, with repercussions in several areas including the environment, regional governance and human security, poverty reduction, and trade and investment.

Pedagogical Benefits of Mini Writing Assignments in Teaching Principles of Economics

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2011

ABSTRACT A mini writing project on economics concepts is developed for undergraduate introductory... more ABSTRACT A mini writing project on economics concepts is developed for undergraduate introductory economics courses. The design of the mini-paper format ensures all students receive the same level of workload regardless the variety of assigned topics. The match of each mini-paper topic to its relevant final exam questions allows us to test the hypothetical benefits of such assignments for learning the relevant course contents. This research design has several advantages as compared to earlier empirical studies on pedagogical values of active learning. The results provide robust evidence of learning benefits of the mini writing assignments. The benefits do not differ significantly for students of different educational backgrounds or among students rendered with various paper marks but appear stronger for students from the science faculty.

China: An International Journal, 2006

Born in 1959, the first year of the 3-year famine associated with Mao's ill-fated Great Leap Forw... more Born in 1959, the first year of the 3-year famine associated with Mao's ill-fated Great Leap Forward, Professor Zhang Jikang began his academic career in China's prestigious Fudan University, Shanghai after obtaining a Masters degree in economics there in 1988. When he was still writing his PhD dissertation, he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996. Three years after he was awarded the doctorate, he became a Full Professor in 2002. His promotion was well deserved. Between1992 and 2002, Zhang wrote ten books and published in academic journals and volumes at a rate of 8-10 articles per year. Meanwhile, he edited six books and translated an economics textbook from English into Chinese. Most of his research was related to foreign investment, international capital flows and bankingfinancial sector regulation. In recent years, using government research grants, he wrote on RMB exchange rate reform, making important contributions to Chinese public policy. Like other successful academics of his age in China today, Zhang was overloaded with heavy teaching and administrative duties. From 1996 onwards, he supervised over 70 Master-degree students and two PhDs, on top of introducing five new courses in financial economics. His main administrative duties at Fudan included Directorship of the Centre for European Studies and Deputy Directorship of two other Centres. Beyond academia, Zhang actively provided consulting services to governmental and business institutions. His non-academic attachments included Senior Adviser to the

China’s West Region Development: Domestic Strategies and Global Implications, 2004

Economics of Transition, 2007

Using data on China's provincial economies for the period 1978-2005, we decomposed the causes and... more Using data on China's provincial economies for the period 1978-2005, we decomposed the causes and factors that have contributed to interregional per capita income disparity. Variance in capital per employee and variance in capital elasticity are found to be the two main sources of income disparity while the employment-labour force ratio is shown to be an important factor in containing the rise of income disparity. An analysis on interregional factor reallocation effects reveals their relatively small and insignificant contributions to overall growth performance. It is also discovered that capital has in most years flowed in the right direction to pursue higher marginal productivity across provincial economies. Inter-provincial labour movement, on the other hand, had not displayed significant equilibrating effects until institutional reforms started to allow freer interregional labour mobility in later years. Generally, we conclude that market-oriented factor mobility has played a crucial role in equalizing factor returns as well as enhancing growth efficiency across regions.

Economics, the study of optimal use of society’s scarce resources, plays a key role in program ev... more Economics, the study of optimal use of society’s scarce resources, plays a key role in program evaluation. Application of concepts and analytical framework in several economics fields has enhanced the rigour of program evaluation methods. This paper goes through the evaluation logic model to review and highlight the key aspects of program evaluation where modern economics has provided crucial insights and practical research tools. The rising importance of economics applied to program evaluation has far reaching implications on the latter’s profession development and its education agenda.

The Great Urbanization of China, 2012

More than one tenth of China's total population has become the socalled floating population, cons... more More than one tenth of China's total population has become the socalled floating population, consisting of mostly rural migrants who are away from their place of household registration for more than six months. Migration improves the efficiency of interregional resource allocation and enhances the welfare of residents in both the poor and rich regions. However, massive migration from low-income regions to high-income regions redistributes the so-called demographic dividends across regions by restructuring regional demographics. The poor regions with net outward migration thus face a major challenge regarding how to maximize the benefits of labor mobility and control its negative impact on their economies. * Reprinted and revised from EAI Background Briefs, No. 399 (2008).

SSRN Electronic Journal

The send-down movement refers to the rustication program run by the Chinese government to send mi... more The send-down movement refers to the rustication program run by the Chinese government to send millions of urban youth to live and work in the countryside in the 1960s and the 1970s. The movement reached its peak during the Cultural

Economic Systems, 1998

Credit-quota plan is an important feature of the post-reform Chinese banking system. The performa... more Credit-quota plan is an important feature of the post-reform Chinese banking system. The performance records of the credit-quota control, however, did not justify it as an effective instrument for macroeconomic management. Factors that have undermined its effectiveness include state banks' obligation to support state-owned enterprises, regional governments' symbiotic relationship with the local bank branches, and the growing autonomy of financial institutions. A series of social-economic developments in recent years have further eroded the effectiveness of the credit quota control and made it increasingly costly a policy instrument to keep. Time is ripe for China to switch to a central banking system based on fractional reserves and open market operations. (JEL E52, P21, O53)

Frontiers of Economics in China, 2014

China Economic Review, 2001

China's industrial policy regime has played an important role in the country's economic developme... more China's industrial policy regime has played an important role in the country's economic development and participation in the world economy. This paper examines the effect of this regime on cross-industry resource allocation in three aspects: incentives, openness of trade and investment, and allocative efficiency. The results indicate effectiveness of industrial policy in offering incentives and controlling market openness in line with the planned priority. Evidence in cross-industry resource allocation, however, suggests significant efficiency gains are yet to be obtained from further participation in globalization.

Asian Economic Papers, Feb 5, 2009

Factor mobility plays an important role in the convergence of regional income levels. This paper ... more Factor mobility plays an important role in the convergence of regional income levels. This paper examines the role of labor mobility in China's regional economic development in the context of phases of demographic transition and the existence of institutional barriers. Our findings show that the two most important sources of interregional income disparity are per worker capital stock and technology level. The fact that the richest provincial economies are at the later phase of demographic transition provides a major reason for why those economies have accumulated higher per worker capital stock and achieved higher productivity levels. We also discover that regional per capita income levels have not displayed convergence since the mid 1990s. Two observations explain this phenomenon. One observation is that capital and labor movements have played only a limited role in equalizing their marginal returns across regions despite the fact that labor mobility has substantially strengthened this role since 2000. The other observation is that the impact of demographic changes on income growth has been distinctly uneven between the rich and poor regions. This phenomenon can be attributed to some particular features of China's interregional labor migration. * I would like to thank Siow Yue Chia, Harry X. Wu, and participants of AEP Conference, Seoul, April 2008, for their valuable comments and suggestions.

China Economic Review, 2003

The rise of China as an economic powerhouse has caused concerns in its neighbors. Prevailing in t... more The rise of China as an economic powerhouse has caused concerns in its neighbors. Prevailing in the region is the fear that China is becoming a gigantic ''regional factory'' that will ''hollow out'' neighboring economies' industries. In this paper, we emphasize the economic benefits that a rising Chinese economy can bring into the region. A discussion on the country's growth strategy suggests that China has recently started shifting from an export-oriented economy to a more domesticdemand-driven one. Such a shift, in the backdrop of China's entry into the World Trade Organization, is opening up the country's huge domestic market for imports, thus providing great opportunities for the regional economies. A custom-made structural VAR analysis based on tradelinks in the region provides empirical evidence that China had quickly emerged as a growth engine in the region even before China joined the WTO and made a full transformation of its growth model.

Economics of Transition, Feb 5, 2008

Using data on China's provincial economies for the period 1978 -2005, we decomposed the causes an... more Using data on China's provincial economies for the period 1978 -2005, we decomposed the causes and factors that have contributed to inter-regional per capita income disparity. Variance in capital per employee and variance in capital elasticity are found to be the two main sources of income disparity while the employment-labour force ratio is shown to be an important factor in containing the rise of income disparity. An analysis on inter-regional factor reallocation effects reveals their relatively small and insignificant contributions to overall growth performance. It is also discovered that capital has in most years flowed in the right direction to pursue higher marginal productivity across provincial economies. Inter-provincial labour movement, on the other hand, had not displayed significant equilibrating effects until institutional reforms started to allow freer inter-regional labour mobility in later years. Generally, we conclude that market-oriented factor mobility has played a crucial role in equalizing factor returns as well as enhancing growth efficiency across regions.

Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger, eds. Deregulation and Interdependence in the Asia-Pacific Region, , 2000

China Economic Review, 2002

Historical data of economic development suggest a Kuznets-Williamson type of relationship between... more Historical data of economic development suggest a Kuznets-Williamson type of relationship between economic growth and income disparity. Using China's provincial data, we first try to determine to what extent such a relationship is valid in the urban-rural disparity context. Next, we identify some factors other than economic growth that might have affected urban-rural disparity. In particular, we calculate and compare the inter-sector gross allocation effect (GAE) at the provincial level to discern the impact of labor mobility and allocative efficiency on urban-rural disparity. We also try to evaluate the contribution of local governance to urban-rural disparity by looking into regional differences in effectiveness of economic growth to raise local standard of living. Policy implications of the findings are discussed in the light of China's institutional reforms and development strategies.

Climate and Development, 2015

Reduction of carbon dioxide emission is of great significance to the sustainability of global dev... more Reduction of carbon dioxide emission is of great significance to the sustainability of global development. For the developing countries, however, carbon reduction is perceived costly for its possible dampening effect on economic growth. This paper builds a Low-Carbon Development Index to assess the potentials for an economy to improve environmental efficiency of its development by reducing carbon dioxide emission while still achieving economic growth. Applying the index to a data set of 30 Chinese provincial economies from for the period 1998 to 2012, we evaluate the environmental efficiency of China's economic development in terms of carbon dioxide emission and discuss whether it is economically feasible for the country to reduce the country's carbon intensity by 40-45% from the level of 2005, a target committed by its government at the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference (COP15).

Frontiers of Economics in China, Sep 23, 2014

China's rise as a global economic power in recent decades has been achieved with tremendous envir... more China's rise as a global economic power in recent decades has been achieved with tremendous environmental costs. Has China been an abnormally heavier polluter in its development path? How has pollution accounted for China's hyper economic growth? This study answers these questions by evaluating the environmental effects of China's growth using a data set of 61 countries over a period of four decades. The analysis is focused on two pollutant emissions: CO 2 emissions, which carry global externalities, and particulate emissions, of which the environmental cost is more domestic. A fractional polynomial (FP) regression model is estimated to project emissions levels per worker based on lagged values of per capita GDP and other variables. It reveals that China's CO 2 emissions have been higher than the projection for most years with an average margin of over 5.3% while its particulate emissions have exceeded projection by an average margin of more than 7.5%. The excessive emissions levels of both pollutants confirm the severity of China's environmental challenges and indicate great potential for the economy to work for a greener growth pattern. On the other hand, contributions of emissions to multi-factor productivity (MFP) growth are estimated by FP regressions based on a human-capital augmented growth model. The results show opposing trends of CO 2 and particulates in their "contributions" to GDP growth, which imply asymmetric incentives to abate the two types of pollution. These findings have important implications for China's environmental policy making.

East Asian Policy, 2015

China has taken a series of proactive measures to prevent and control air pollution. The Air Poll... more China has taken a series of proactive measures to prevent and control air pollution. The Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (2013) includes main policy initiatives to improve national and regional air quality. Fiscal reforms are needed to fund clean-air technology and incentivise firms and households to reduce pollution and economise energy use. The War on Smog requires high-level coordination of governments at different levels and various local jurisdictions.

Based on the data of six major sectors and 13 industrial sectors of the Chinese economy, this stu... more Based on the data of six major sectors and 13 industrial sectors of the Chinese economy, this study examines the impact of sectoral factor reallocation on productivity growth for the period 1986-2000. According to the results, the earlier post-reform high productivity growth was not sustained in more recent years. The overall performance of inter-sector reallocation was also disappointing. Limited improvements in productivity growth were observed for the industrial sectors as China beefed up reforms of state-owned enterprises in the late 1990s. This evidence highlights the huge potential gains for a developing economy like China to build sound market institutions in line with greater market openness and inter-sector factor mobility.

China’s West Region Development: Domestic Strategies and Global Implications, 2004

China has been the world's fastest growing economy in the last two decades, in which its total GD... more China has been the world's fastest growing economy in the last two decades, in which its total GDP sextupled. This remarkable economic growth has been, however, mainly a coastal phenomenon. The country's western inland region, with a total area of 6.85 million km (71.4% of the whole nation), was largely left out of the boom. While its population (367 million by 2002) accounts for 28.8% of China's total, its share of the national GDP is under 17%. The per capita income of the western region is less than 40% of the level in the eastern region. At the turn of the century, the Chinese government launched the West China Development Program, aiming to reorient the growth vigour towards the western region. A series of fiscal initiatives and institutional innovations have been proposed and implemented to boost the region's development prospects and close the income gaps between the western inland provinces and the rest of China. In the first three years of this program, 36 mega infrastructure projects with investment over 600 billion yuan (equivalent to US$ 72 billion) have taken off. China's banking sector has increased another 600 billion yuan of loans to the provinces in the western region. 1 To Chinese policy makers, the development of the west region is meant to reduce interregional disparities and to meet both environmental protection and national security goals. Outside of China's borders, the effects of this development will be far-reaching, both regionally and globally, with repercussions in several areas including the environment, regional governance and human security, poverty reduction, and trade and investment.

Pedagogical Benefits of Mini Writing Assignments in Teaching Principles of Economics

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2011

ABSTRACT A mini writing project on economics concepts is developed for undergraduate introductory... more ABSTRACT A mini writing project on economics concepts is developed for undergraduate introductory economics courses. The design of the mini-paper format ensures all students receive the same level of workload regardless the variety of assigned topics. The match of each mini-paper topic to its relevant final exam questions allows us to test the hypothetical benefits of such assignments for learning the relevant course contents. This research design has several advantages as compared to earlier empirical studies on pedagogical values of active learning. The results provide robust evidence of learning benefits of the mini writing assignments. The benefits do not differ significantly for students of different educational backgrounds or among students rendered with various paper marks but appear stronger for students from the science faculty.

China: An International Journal, 2006

Born in 1959, the first year of the 3-year famine associated with Mao's ill-fated Great Leap Forw... more Born in 1959, the first year of the 3-year famine associated with Mao's ill-fated Great Leap Forward, Professor Zhang Jikang began his academic career in China's prestigious Fudan University, Shanghai after obtaining a Masters degree in economics there in 1988. When he was still writing his PhD dissertation, he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996. Three years after he was awarded the doctorate, he became a Full Professor in 2002. His promotion was well deserved. Between1992 and 2002, Zhang wrote ten books and published in academic journals and volumes at a rate of 8-10 articles per year. Meanwhile, he edited six books and translated an economics textbook from English into Chinese. Most of his research was related to foreign investment, international capital flows and bankingfinancial sector regulation. In recent years, using government research grants, he wrote on RMB exchange rate reform, making important contributions to Chinese public policy. Like other successful academics of his age in China today, Zhang was overloaded with heavy teaching and administrative duties. From 1996 onwards, he supervised over 70 Master-degree students and two PhDs, on top of introducing five new courses in financial economics. His main administrative duties at Fudan included Directorship of the Centre for European Studies and Deputy Directorship of two other Centres. Beyond academia, Zhang actively provided consulting services to governmental and business institutions. His non-academic attachments included Senior Adviser to the

China’s West Region Development: Domestic Strategies and Global Implications, 2004

Economics of Transition, 2007

Using data on China's provincial economies for the period 1978-2005, we decomposed the causes and... more Using data on China's provincial economies for the period 1978-2005, we decomposed the causes and factors that have contributed to interregional per capita income disparity. Variance in capital per employee and variance in capital elasticity are found to be the two main sources of income disparity while the employment-labour force ratio is shown to be an important factor in containing the rise of income disparity. An analysis on interregional factor reallocation effects reveals their relatively small and insignificant contributions to overall growth performance. It is also discovered that capital has in most years flowed in the right direction to pursue higher marginal productivity across provincial economies. Inter-provincial labour movement, on the other hand, had not displayed significant equilibrating effects until institutional reforms started to allow freer interregional labour mobility in later years. Generally, we conclude that market-oriented factor mobility has played a crucial role in equalizing factor returns as well as enhancing growth efficiency across regions.