Past Lectures

2025 - Matteo Maggiori

Professor Maggiori presented how the U.S. and China apply economic pressure to achieve their political and economic goals, and the economic costs and benefits that this competition is imposing on the world. A discussion of economic security policies that other countries are implementing to shield their economies.

2023 - Yasheng Huang

China was once the most technologically advanced civilization in the world. Ancient Chinese achievements in technology are simply staggering. China led Europe in metallurgy, ship construction, navigation techniques, and many other fields, often by several centuries. The Chinese also invented gunpowder, paper, the water clock, the moveable printing press, and other consequential technologies way ahead of the West. For example, the Chinese invented the seismograph 1,700 years before the French.

But China’s technological development stalled, stagnated, and eventually collapsed and its early technological leadership did not set the country on a modernization path. In this lecture Professor Yasheng Huang examines the factors behind the rise and the fall of Chinese historical technology and draws lessons for today’s China.

2022 - Susan Shirk

Why did China abandon its successful foreign policy of restraint and shift toward confrontation and unchecked control over its own society? Susan Shirk will discuss that surprisingly the shift began under Hu Jintao's collective leadership (2002-12). Under the personalistic leadership of Xi Jinping the trend has intensified. Those who implement Xi's directives compete to outdo one another, provoking an even greater global backlash. To counter China's overreach, the worst mistake the rest of the world, and the United States in particular, can make is to overreact. Understanding the domestic political drivers of foreign policy in both countries can help us stem the downward spiral in relations.

2019 - Xu Chenggang

Professor Xu's talk is based on a book project which studies the origins of contemporary China’s institutions. 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? Other intimately related questions to be addressed are: 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. View the presentation slides.

2018 - Dan Voytas

Dr. Voytas, Professor of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development at the University of Minnesota, co-inventor of TALEN gene-editing technology, and Chief Technology Officer of Calyxt, will discuss the rapid advancement of plant gene-editing and its implications for global agriculture. A leading expert on plant genetics and an entrepreneur whose company went public in 2017,  Dr. Voytas will examine the role that technologies such as TALEN and CRISPR are having in the development of healthier food and non-GMO plants with agriculturally advantageous traits. View the presentation slides.

2016 - Ken Shadlen

Historically most developing countries did not allow patents on pharmaceutical products. Fearing that the costs of having private rights of exclusion over these sorts of inventions would outweigh the benefits, most countries prohibited pharmaceutical patenting. In the closing decades of the 20th Century, however, the global politics of intellectual property underwent a fundamental shift, as new international trade rules made it obligatory for all countries to begin granting pharmaceutical patents. The globalization of pharmaceutical patenting has generated both hope, that increasing the geographic scope of patent protection would yield expanded biomedical innovation, and fear, that increasing the geographic scope of patent protection would put public health budgets under stress and leave many without access to essential medicines. Shadlen analyzes the globalization of pharmaceutical patenting, examining the rise of pharmaceutical patenting, the diversity of national responses to the new global shift, and emerging issues on the horizon. View the presentation slides.

2015 - Marcus Kurtz

National prosperity is not typically seen as a product of profound agricultural transformation. At the same time, the few sustained post-war economic “miracles” (as in Korea, Taiwan, Japan, for example) have all been in contexts that experienced tremendous transformation of agricultural property rights and political relationships. Kurtz emphasizes the critical importance of agricultural transformation for national development. In the countryside, unlike cities, development-oriented reform typically involves fundamental reforms such as wholesale restructuring of property rights, the creation of basic markets (in land, labor, and commodities), and the disruption of clientelistic and machine politics. Globally the countryside is becoming smaller and less economically central, but the way in which this comes about can make the difference between prosperity and long-term stagnation. View the presentation slides.

2013 - Min Zhu

Dr. Zhu will discuss global interconnectedness and the shift in the gravity of growth toward emerging and developing economies. In addition, he will describe the global financial markets and Asia’s position in these markets as well as the role of financial markets in Asia and how they can support sustainable growth in this region. View the presentation slides.

2012 - Frederick Chavalit Tsao

Mr. Tsao will address the intersection of family and business in the developing world. As Chairman of a family-owned multinational corporation, he is interested in the peculiar challenges faced by family-owned businesses and the role of such businesses in promoting development. He is particularly concerned with the destabilizing effects of rapid economic growth on traditional social structures. Mr. Tsao will discuss recent efforts to promote development while preserving family, social, and cultural harmony.

2009 - Andrew Crockett

Sir Andrew Crockett was the President of JPMorgan Chase International, and a member of the Executive Committee of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Before joining JPMorgan Chase, Mr. Crockett had been General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements, serving two five-year terms. At the request of the G-7 Finance Ministers, he also served from 1999-2003 as the first Chairman of the Financial Stability Forum. Earlier in his career, Mr. Crockett had held senior positions at the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund. Mr. Crockett has also served in the past as Chairman of Working Party 3 of the OECD, as Alternate Governor of the IMF for the United Kingdom, as a member of the Monetary Committee of the European Union, and as a Trustee of the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation.