News Network (Correspondents: Liu Zhenxing, Mao Haitao, Tian Yun; Photographers: Du Peng, Peng Jia, Xu Ruobing) On the occasion of its 75th anniversary themed by “promoting academic spirit and gathering outstanding talents”, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL), held the opening ceremony of the 2023 Annual conference of the China Economics Society (CES) on June 24 at the Nanhu Campus .The annual conference was organized by the CES and hosted by School of Business Administration, ZUEL. Hou Zhenfa, Secretary of the CPC ZUEL Committee, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony. Zhou Mingshan, Member of the CPC ZUEL Standing Committee and Vice President presided over the opening ceremony. Professor Liu Qihong, President of the CES, gave a welcoming address, and Wu Haitao, Dean of the School of Business Administration, delivered a speech of thanks.
Under the theme of “promoting China’s economic development with high quality”, Professor Lin Yifu, famous Chinese economist from Peking University, three Nobel Prize winners in economics, namely Professor Eric Maskin of Harvard University, Professor Alvin Roth of Stanford University and Professor Joshua Angrist of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, were invited to deliver keynote speeches. In addition, there were also 6 special forums and 88 parallel virtual sessions. This is a high-end and cutting-edge conference with a large scale and multi-perspectives.
Hou Zhenfa, Secretary of the CPC ZUEL Committee, pointed out that with the current world facing profound and drastic changes, and the pace of global economic stability, recovery and development accelerating, we must constantly strengthen our understanding and actively take countermeasures. ZUEL, as a university founded by the CPC, has been striving to build itself into a “world-class university with deep integration of economics and law” on the basis of inheriting the revolutionary spirit. The School of Business Administration, the host of the conference, taking root in ZUEL and facing the world, spares no efforts to build a first-class business school integrating law and management and a brandwith distinctive ZUEL characteristicsin business education in China and the world. He called on the participating experts to strengthen cooperation in exploring major directions of world economic development, summarize China’s economic development experience and optimization path, and contribute the wisdom of China to the global economic recovery and the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.
Professor Eric Maskin of Harvard University, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics, made a report with the title “A Resolution of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem”. In this report, he pointed out that although the traditional independence assumption of Arrow’s impossibility theorem was widely respected by scholars, it will make voting rules insensitive to the voters’ preference intensity. Based on this, a modified version of the independence condition that could improve voting rules for elections was proposed in this report.
Professor Alvin Roth of Stanford University, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics, spoke on the topic of “Economists as Engineers: How Game Theory Led to Practical Market Design", in which he introduced the important role of game theory for market design through specific cases.
Renowned economist and Professor Lin Yifu of Peking University analyzed the reasons for slow economic growth in some developing countries from the perspective of new structural economics in his speech entitled “Development Ideas and Development Performance: A New Structural Economics Perspective”. In addition, Professor Joshua Angrist of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics, also gave the keynote speech in the later session.
Apart from the keynote speech, six special forums have been held at the annual conference. Speakers included Prof. Wei Shangjin from Columbia University, Prof. Xiong Wei from Princeton University, Prof. Feng Jin from Fudan University, Prof. Kathleen McGarry from the University of California at Los Angeles, Prof. Alessandro Acquisti from Carnegie Mellon University, Prof. Tan Guofu from the University of Southern California, Prof. Marshall Van Alstyne from Boston University, Prof. Lin Ping from Shandong University, Prof. Jin Zhe from the University of Maryland, Prof. Luis Aguiar from University of Zurich, Prof. Fang Hanming from University of Pennsylvania, Prof. Zhao Yaohui and Prof. Huang Jikun from Peking University, Prof. Li Shi from Zhejiang University, Prof. Scott Rozelle from Stanford University, and Prof. Wan Guanghua from Fudan University.
The 2023 conference of CES has set five awards for the scholars in order to commend them for their efforts made in promoting China’s reform and opening up, facilitating the academic communication between China and other countries, and promoting the research on China’s economy. Prof. Qian Yingyi and Prof. Tian Guoqiang were awarded the “Outstanding Scholar Award”. The “Distinguished Service Award” has been given to Prof. Zhang Xin, Prof. Song Shunfeng, and Prof. Lin Shuanglin. Prof. Yao Shujie and Prof. Song Bingtao were awarded the “Distinguished Contribution Award”. The “Gregory Chow Best Paper Award” was awarded to Yuan Zherong from Zhejiang University. Qiu Xincheng from Pennsylvanian University and Yi Yurong from London School of Economics and Political Science won the “CES’s Rising Star Award”.
The conference, with nearly four hundred participants, has received 573 papers in total, among which 272 have been accepted. Experts and scholars have conducted in-depth discussions on issues including solutions to Arrow's impossibility theorem, big model for tech loans, development model and development performance, the external environment and internal motives of China’s industrial upgrade, the consumption of Chinese families under the new development paradigm, the psychological condition of the elderly in China, and the Belt and Road policies from the perspective of development economics.
Policy summits and deans’ forums were also held during the annual conference. Experts and scholars from multiple universities — such as Peking University, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Texas A&M University, Beijing Normal University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Capital University of Economics and Business — have had a heated discussion on promoting the economic development of China with high quality.
The CES was founded in New York in May 1985. The society, with over one thousand members, is an internationally significant organization of Chinese economists. It has long been dedicated to promoting the China’s reform and opening up, facilitating the academic communication between China and other nations, and enhancing research on China’s economy. It has enormously contributed to China’s market-oriented reform and opening up, the economic and cultural communication between China and the rest of the world, and the development of the economics in China. Since 2010, the CES has been holding conferences annually in China. The 2023 conference was the first offline annual conference held in China since the 2019 outbreak of COVID pandemic.