Economist Lardy, UW alum, to talk about ‘Rise of Private Business in China’

Preeminent China economist Nicholas R. Lardy, a University of Wisconsin–Madison alumnus, will return to the Madison campus on Wednesday, October 22 to give a public lecture on “The Rise of Private Business in China.”

Lardy, who received his B.A. in economics at UW in 1968, last month published Markets over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China, which traces the increasing role of market forces and refutes the widely advanced argument that Chinese economic progress rests on the government’s control of the economy’s “commanding heights.”

His talk, based on the book, will be held at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery’s DeLuca Forum, starting at 4:30 p.m., and is free and open to the public.

Nicholas Lardy
Nicholas Lardy

This will be the second event in the Wisconsin China Initiative (WCI) Red Cap Lecture Series on China and Global Economics, and the first 200 attendees will receive free WCI hats. The first, held last April, featured Wall Street economist Stephen Roach, who also received his B.A. in economics at UW in 1968, speaking on America and China: An Unsustainable Codependency.

Also on October 22, Lardy will give opening remarks on Chinese economic trends at the Global Business Series: China workshop, sponsored by the WCI/Division of International Studies, Office of Corporate Relations and Division of Continuing Studies.

Lardy is the Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a private, nonprofit institution for the study and discussion of international economic policy.

Previously, he was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (1995- 2003) and served as director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington (1991-95). He also was the Frederick Frank Adjunct Professor of International Trade and Finance at the Yale University School of Management (1997-2000).

Lardy received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan in 1975.

His other recent books include Sustaining China’s Economic Growth after the Global Financial Crisis (2012), The Future of China’s Exchange Rate Policy (2009), and China’s Rise: Challenges and Opportunities (2008).

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the editorial boards of Asia Policy and the China Review.

– by Kerry G. Hill