Conference: The Emergence of China and India in the Global Economy

The causes and consequences of the acceleration of economic development in China and India in recent decades, and the implications for other developing and developed countries around the world.

Date: Thursday 3rd July - Saturday 5th July 2008
Venue: Centre for Economic Performance, Conference room R405, 4th Floor, LSE Research Lab, Lionel Robbins Building,10 Portugal Street, London, WC2A 2HD
Local Organisers: Stephen Redding & John Van Reenen
Time: 12.00pm - 6.30pm Thursday 09.30am - 6.00pm Friday 09.00am - 1.30pm Saturday

Overview:

This three day conference debated all aspects of the impact of the emerging economic powers on Europe and the US and the changes within India and China itself.

Download Conference Papers

A highlight of the conference was a policy panel consisting of:

Martin Wolf of the Financial Times
Alan Winters, former head of World Bank Research
Athar Hussain of LSE’s Asia Observatory
Peter Schott, Professor at Yale.

John Van Reenen, Director of CEP chaired a lively discussion. He kicked off by asking three questions about lessons for growth, the effect of globalisation on inequality and the death of the political coalition for Globalisation.

Download Policy Panel Questions (PDF)

Listen to Policy Panel audio file (WAV)

The panelists focused on the fact that the lessons to be learned from China's and India's development may be limited for other countries. A key factor was ceratinly an emphasis on exports, a degree of opening up of markets to imports and some liberalisation of the economy. But China has embarked on a more classical development path through manufacturinge exports, whereas India's growth has been startlingly service-driven: a very new mode of development.

There was a dispute over the role of trade in driving inequality in the rich countries. Martin Wolf argued for technology having the major role whereas the other panelists saw a greater role of trade. Van Reenen's paper actually showed that the two were inter-related: trade with China appeared to have stimulated faster technical progress in the West.

Although the panel agreed that the prospects for the Doha round were grim, Martin Wolf pointed to the fact that globalisation had created footlose multinationals with much less vested interest in protectionism in any one country. This by itself undermined one of the key lobbies against trade - vested domestic business interests.

• Conference Handbook for Speakers & Discussants - Download PDF



• Conference Programme Download (PDF)



• Conference Venue: Map and directions (PDF)



• Conference Papers

The general themes of the conference are the causes and consequences of the acceleration of economic development in China and India in recent decades, and their implications for other developing and developed countries around the world. Topics of particular interest include: trade and financial liberalization, growth and inequality; structural change and economic development; institutions and economic performance; enterprise reform; international trade, foreign direct investment and outsourcing; intellectual property rights; trade and innovation; and the restructuring of production in developed countries.

This conference was sponsored by the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), the India Observatory at LSE and the Institute for Economic Research (IFO) at the University of Munich.

It was held at the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, London, England from Thursday 3 to Saturday 5 July 2008.

For more information, please contact Jo Cantlay at j.m.cantlay@lse.ac.uk

Papers

Trade induced technical change? The impact of Chinese imports on technology and employment
Mirko Draca, CEP &LSE (with Nick Bloom,Stanford, and John Van Reenen, CEP & LSE)
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Profiting from Government Stakes in a Command Economy: Evidence from Chinese Asset Sales
Ray Fisman, Columbia
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Multiproduct Firms, Product Mix and Trade Reform
Amit Khandelwal, Columbia (with Penny Goldberg, Princeton, Nina Pavcnik, Dartmouth, and Petia Topalova, IMF)
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The Higher Educational Transformation of China and its Global Implications
Yao Li, University of Western Ontario (with John Whalley, Shunming Zhang and Xiliang Zhao)
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Much Ado About Nothing: American Jobs and the Rise of Service Outsourcing in China and India
Runjuan Liu, Alberta (with Dan Trefler, Toronto)
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Does Social Capital Help Households Cope with Natural Disaster During Marketization: Evidence from Rural China
Ming Lu, Fudan (with Hiroshi Sato, Hitotsubashui and Shuang Zhang,Cornell)
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China's Exporters and Importers: Firms, Products and Trade Partners
Kalina Manova, Stanford University (with Zhiwei Zhang, IMF)
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Offshoring: General Equilibrium Effects on Wages, Production and Trade
Frederic Robert-Nicoud, CEP & LSE (with Richard Baldwin, Geneva)
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Estimating Cross-Country Differences in Product Quality
Peter Schott, Yale (with Juan Carlos Hallak)
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Growing Like China
Fabrizio Zilibotti, Zurich (with Zhen Song and Kjetil Storesletten)
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