Sunday, January 27, 2008

More on World Bank's Chief Economist Justin Lin

Reader Kempton asked me if Justin did his thesis on China's agricultural reform. I believe he did. I think his 1992 AER piece was part of his dissertation. I believe that paper was also the first attempt to quantify the benefits of the introduction of the household responsibility system (聯產承包責任制) in China's country side.

Actually, in addition to Justin, I believe there are a couple of other Chinese graduates from Chicago who did choose China's agricultral reform as their thesis topic. They are James Wen (at Trinity), Dennis Yang (at CUHK) and Zhao Yaohui (at Beijing U)

1 comment:

Kempton said...

Hi Gary,

Thanks for your time in looking up the information and answering my questions (plus the extra info you provided).

A random search triggered from reading James Wen's profile, I found this interesting and downloadable article by Justin -- "The Needham Puzzle: Why the Industrial Revolution Did Not Originate in China".

http://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/uclawp/650.html

Cheers,
Kempton