The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI) at UChicago is pleased to announce Chang-Tai Hsieh, the Phyllis and Irwin Winkelried Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth, as the new director of BFI-China. Hsieh replaces Zhiguo He, BFI-China founding director, formerly at Chicago Booth and now at Stanford.
BFI-China combines the rich intellectual tradition of Chicago Economics with that of Tsinghua University’s School for Economics and Management (Beijing), in a first-of-its-kind partnership to encourage frontier economics research. Founded in 2018, this partnership supports faculty and doctoral student exchanges, as well as regular workshops and forums to share results and discuss areas of mutual interest.
“I am thrilled to welcome Chang-Tai to this important leadership position,” said Erik Hurst, the Frank P. and Marianne R. Diassi Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth and Director of BFI. “Chang-Tai not only brings keen insight into the complex Chinese economy, but he is also a world-class economist who personifies UChicago’s rich scholarly tradition. I look forward to working with Chang-Tai to achieve his vision for BFI-China.”
Hsieh received his PhD in economics from UC-Berkeley in 1998 and has served on Chicago Booth’s faculty since 2008. His research spans many issues related to growth and development in countries around the world, and he has published widely in prominent journals. Hsieh has been a visiting scholar at Federal Reserve Banks, as well as the World Bank’s Development Economics Group and the Economic Planning Agency in Japan. He is a Research Associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Senior Fellow at the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development, and a member of the Steering Group of the International Growth Center in London. He is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, an Elected Member of Academia Sinica, and a two-time recipient of the Sun Ye-Fang Prize.
“I am honored to lead the Becker Friedman Institute’s work in China, on behalf of the UChicago Economics community,” said Hsieh. “China, with its astounding growth over the last three decades and its emerging economic challenges, offers important questions with global implications. I look forward to working with scholars at UChicago, in partnership with Tsinghua, to shed light on the world’s second-largest economy.”
See BFI-China for more information.