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China Task Force Meeting, Manchester 2008

June 25, 2008

Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester   Manchester, United Kingdom

Meeting Report  406kb pdf

This was the third formal meeting of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue Task Force on China, a group that also meets informally at Columbia University and in China.
 

Following our conversation at the last task force meeting, the group focused on regulation. First, they initiated a discussion of the general theory of regulation, followed by a look at regulation in several specific areas - competition policy, natural monopolies like utilities, telecom, financial markets (banking, securities), labor market, and product market (safety, consumer protection) , and environmental regulation. The group also considered certain aspects of the regulatory process, and perhaps the political economy of regulation (the problems of regulatory capture). Many of the issues that came up in our discussion of property rights were also relevant here - e.g. that it is not just the dejure regulations, but the de facto regulations that matter; just as implicit or explicit property rights are embedded in many areas, so too for regulation (immigration bills can, for instance, be viewed as "regulating" immigration); we want to consider distributive effects of regulation, as well as the special problems of regulating in a "large" economy, with limited central control.

Indeed, it is difficult to define precisely the boundaries of regulation. Tax policy (and even budget policy) has effects that are akin to regulation. The private sector engages in regulation (self-regulation, e.g. setting of standards).

Finally, increasingly the international regime (e.g. WTO and other trade agreements) is circumscribing policy autonomy. A key issue is how these restricts China's policy space, and how China best manage within these restrictions

This is a particularly opportune time for taking up these issues, as the problems of inadequate regulation in America's financial system - and its enormous consequences - become apparent. There is now an active debate in the United States, a growing consensus that it may have gone too far down the path of deregulation.

  • Heping Cao
    Task Force Member
    Deputy Dean of School of Economics
    Peking University
  • Fang Lee Cooke
    Task Force Member
    Professor of HRM and Chinese Studies, Deputy Head of School (Research and Innovation)
    RMIT School of Management
  • Zhiyuan Cui
    Task Force Member
    Professor, Public Policy and Management
    Tsinghua University
  • Jun Fu
    Task Force Member
    Deputy Dean of School of Government
    Peking University
  • James Galbraith
    Task Force Member
    Professor of Government, LBJ School of Public Affairs
    University of Texas
  • Qin Gao
    Task Force Member
    Assistant Professor
    Fordham University
  • Stephany Griffith-Jones
    Task Force Member
    Financial Markets Program Director
    Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)
  • Antara Haldar
    Task Force Member
    PhD Student
    Columbia University
  • Roselyn Hseuh
    Task Force Member
    Assistant Professor of Political Science
    Temple University
  • Haizhou Huang
    Task Force Member
    Senior Economist, Research Department
    International Monetary Fund
  • Deming Huo
    Task Force Member
    Professor
    Peking University
  • Athar Hussain
    Task Force Member
    Deputy Director, Asia Research Centre
    London School of Economics
  • Mo Ji
    Task Force Member
    PhD Candidate
    Columbia University
  • David Kennedy
    Task Force Chair
    Professor
    Harvard Law School
  • Ling Li
    Task Force Member
    Senior Deputy Director
    China Center for Economic Research, Peking University
  • Akbar Noman
    Task Force Member
    Senior Policy Fellow
    Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)
  • Roy Prosterman
    Task Force Member
    Emeritus Professor of Law
    University of Washington
  • Ye Qi
    Task Force Member
    Professor of Environmental Policy, School of Public Policy and Management
    Tsinghua University
  • Carl Riskin
    Task Force Member
    Professor of Economics
    The Graduate Center, City University of New York
  • Francesco Saraceno
    Task Force Member
    Professor
    Sciences Po Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris
  • Francis Snyder
    Task Force Member
    Professor, Law Department
    London School of Economics
  • Joseph Stiglitz
    Task Force Chair
    President
    Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)
  • Xifang Sun
    Task Force Member
    Assistant Professor, Deparment of Economics
    Seoul National University
  • Jin Yeu Tsou
    Task Force Member
    Director, Center for Housing Innovations
    The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • Xiaobing Wang
    Task Force Member
    Lecturer
    University of Manchester
  • Christine Wong
    Task Force Member
    Senior Fellow in Contemporary Chinese Studies
    University of Oxford
  • Jianyue Xu
    Task Force Member
    PhD Student
    University of Manchester
  • Jintao Xu
    Task Force Member
    Professor of Natural Resource Economics
    Department of Environmental Sciences
    Peking University
  • Liqing Zhang
    Task Force Member
    Dean of School of Finance
    Central University of Finance and Economics - Beijing
  • Zhong Zhang
    Task Force Member
    PhD Candidate
    University of Manchester
All Files (27) zip
Challenges for the Implementation Strategy of Affordable China Housing

407kb pdf
Jin Yeu Tsou,
Han Yu,
Hui Heung-Sum Cecilia

Chinas Challenges in Environmental Regulation

51kb pdf
Ye Qi

Chinas Liberalization Two-Step: A Response to Globalization

130kb pdf
Roselyn Hseuh

Collective Forest Tenure Reform in China Analysis of Driving Forces and Performance

271kb pdf
Jintao Xu

Financial Reforms in China

21kb pdf
Deming Huo

Labour Market Regulations and Informal Employment in China: To What Extent are Workers Protected?

193kb pdf
Fang Lee Cooke

Legal Deterrence: The Foundation of Corporate Governance - Evidence from China

367kb pdf
Zhong Zhang

Regulation and Corruption in China

5kb pdf
Xiaobing Wang

Should China Accelerate its Capital Account Liberalization?

79kb pdf
Liqing Zhang

The Dialectics of Law and Development: On Implementing Institutions - Yunus and De Soto Compared

223kb pdf
Joseph Stiglitz,
Antara Haldar

Banking Reform and Bank Bail Outs in the Chinese Mirror

80kb pdf
Katharina Pistor

Management and Regulation in China's Healthcare System (powerpoint)

460kb pdf
Ling Li

Some Caution about Property Rights as a Recipe for Economic Development

122kb pdf
David Kennedy

Governing Stock Markets in Transition Economies: Lessons from China

132kb pdf
Katharina Pistor,
Chenggang Xu

Regional Competition and Regulatory Decentralization: The Case of China

220kb pdf
Chenggang Xu,
Julan Du

Criteria for Financial Regulation after the current crisis

27kb pdf
Stephany Griffith-Jones

A Discussion on the Unconventional Aspects of China's Property Exchanges (CPEs)

13kb pdf
Heping Cao

Facing Challenges: Economic Prospects and Policy Choices in China

42kb pdf
Jun Fu

Government Failure vs. Market Failure: Principles of Regulation

149kb pdf
Joseph Stiglitz

How the Legal Framework Has Been Revolved To Regulate the Chinese Labor Market?

94kb pdf
Wang Meiyan,
Cai Fang

If Chinese Farmers Were to be Given Full Private Ownership of their Land, What Measures Might Contribute to this Being Most Confidently and Successfully Done?

47kb pdf
Roy Prosterman

Law and Development Economics: Toward a New Alliance

200kb pdf
David Kennedy

Regulation, Competition, and Innovation An Alternative Approach to Transaction Costs

14kb pdf
Ping Chen

Reputational Sanctions in China's Securities Market

308kb pdf
Curtis Milhaupt,
Benjamin Liebman

The Beijing Bubble: Inequality, Trade, and Capital Inflow into China

207kb pdf
James Galbraith,
Sara Hsu,
Wenjie Zhang

The Institutional Foundations of China's Reforms and Development

645kb pdf
Chenggang Xu

The Financial Crisis of 2007 and 2008 and its Macroeconomic Consequences

176kb pdf
Joseph Stiglitz