2026 Chinese Economists Society (CES) China Annual Conference
Southwest University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China
July 3-5, 2026
The Chinese Economists Society (CES) calls for papers for the 2026 Annual Conference, to be held in Chengdu, China, July 3-5 (Friday-Sunday), 2026. The local host for the conference is the School of Finance and School of Economics at Southwest University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE). The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2026 (Sunday)， and please indicate explicitly whether your paper is for online or in-person presentation in the field of “Note:” during submission.
The conference welcomes submissions in all fields of economics. The conference includes invited keynote speeches, invited speakers’ sessions and panels, and parallel sessions. Additionally, we are organizing online presentations on July 3 (Friday). The main events of the conference, including opening remarks, keynote speeches, and parallel sessions, are scheduled for July 4 (Saturday) and July 5 (Sunday).
Keynote Speakers (confirmed and listed in alphabetical order by last name):
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Dr. Hanming Fang. Norman C. Grosman Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. 17th Kenneth Arrow Prize by the International Health Economics Association (iHEA), and Fellow of the Econometric Society. Co-editor of Journal of Health Economics.
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Dr. Jianjun Miao. Tsingshan Chair Professor and Dean of School of Economics, Zhejiang University. A former Professor of Economics at Boston University. a Fellow of SAET and a senior Fellow of ABFER. the founder of the China International Conference in Macroeconomics (CICM) and the China Forum of Macroeconomic Research.
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Dr. Zheng (Michael) Song. Wei Lun Professor of Economics and Head of Department of Economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Fellow of the Econometric Society.
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Dr. Shang-Jin Wei. N.T. Wang Professor of Chinese Business and Economy and Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia University. Chief Economist of Asian Development Bank from 2014-2016. Director, NBER Working Group on the Chinese Economy.
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Dr. Wei Xiong. John H. Scully ’66 Professor in Finance
Professor of Economics, Princeton University. Academic Dean of School of Management and Economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. Fellow of the Econometric Society.
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Dr. Gang Yi. Former CES President, Co-Founder of Center for China Economic Research at Peking University. Governor of People’ Bank of China 2018-2023.
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Invited Speakers (confirmed and listed in alphabetical order by last name):
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Dr. Hengjie Ai. Professor of Finance, Robert M. Steiner Chair in Business, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Dr. Xi Chen. Associate professor of Public Health, Global Health, Economics, and Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Yale University. Fellow, Global Labor Organization. Editor, Journal of Population Economics.
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Dr. Zhao Chen. Professor & Deputy director, China Center for Economic Studies, Fudan University. Vice Dean and Chairman, Academic Committee of School of Economics, Fudan University.
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Dr. Chao Fu. Professor, Mary Claire Aschenbrener Phipps Distinguished Chair, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin at Madison. Co-Editor, Quantitative Economics. Board of Directors, Journal of Economic Literature.
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Dr. Guojun He. The Hong Kong Jockey Club Professor in Economics, HKU Business School. Research Director, EPIC-China, University of Chicago. Director, HKU-Jockey Club Enterprise Sustainability Global Research Institute, and ESG Research Institute, HKU Business School (Shenzhen). Co-Editor, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
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Dr. Yiping Huang. Boya Distinguished Professor and Dean of National School of Development, Peking University. Editor of China Economic Journal. Chairman of the Academic Committee of the China Finance 40 Forum.
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Dr. Ruixue Jia. Professor of Economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. Co-Director of China Data Lab. Co-Chair, China Economics Summer Institute. Co-Editor, Review of Economics and Statistics.
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Dr. Shanjun Li. the Steven and Roberta Denning Professor of Global Sustainability in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, and a Senior Fellow at both the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Stanford University. Co-Editor of the Journal of Public Economics and the International Journal of Industrial Organization.
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Dr. Jun Pan. SAIF Chair Professor, Professor of Finance, Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Editor of Review of Finance, and Director, Western Finance Association.
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Dr. Pengfei Wang, Boya Distinguished Professor and Dean of HSBC Business School, Executive Director, Sargent Institute of Quantitative Finance and Economics, Peking University. Secretary General, China Economics Annual Conference, and Executive Director, China Forum of Macroeconomic Research.
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Dr. Xi Weng. Professor, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University.
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Dr. Dacheng Xiu. Joseph Sondheimer Professor of Econometrics and Statistics, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. Co-Editor of Journal of Business & Economic Statistics and Journal of Financial Econometrics.
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Dr. Daniel Yi Xu. David Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Economics at Duke University. Co-Editor, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.
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Dr. Miaojie Yu. President of Liaoning University, Fellow of International Economic Association, Deputy of the National People’ s Congress of China. Fellow of the Royal Economic Society.
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Dr. Xiaobo Zhang. Chair Professor, Guanghua School of Management, Director of Enterprise Big Data Center at Peking University, and Editor of China Economic Review.
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Dr. Xiaoyan Zhang. Xinyuan Chair Professor of Finance, Associate Dean, PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University. Co-Editor, Journal of Banking and Finance.
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Dr. Yaohui Zhao. Professor of Economics, Dongfureng School of Economics and Social Development, Wuhan University. Deputy Director of China Labor Economics Association and China Comparative Economics Research Committee.
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PROGRAM COMMITTEE (listed in alphabetical order by last name):
Wei Cui, University College London
Jingting Fan, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business
Dong Feng, Tsinghua University
Haoyu Gao, Renmin University of China
Jia He, Nankai University
Bo Li, Peking University
Bingjing Li, University of Hong Kong
Kai Li, Peking University
Dan Lu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Hong Ma, Tsinghua University
Zhiwei Xu, Fudan University
Yifan Zhang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
The CES invites both members and non-members to submit individual papers and/or to propose organized sessions at the 2026 CES Annual Conference. All fields of specialization within Economics will be considered, and presentations can be virtual or in-person.
We also plan to have a few sessions for papers written in Chinese. Preferences will be given to organized sessions and to papers covering topics of particular importance to economic researchers in China.
INDIVIDUAL SUBMISSIONS
The submission process is open through March 15, 2026. The main submitter must be a member of the Chinese Economists Society, and all participants must register for the conference. To submit, please, please click Submission on the right-side menu, follow the instructions to enter the paper title, author name(s), JEL code(s), keywords, abstract of the paper, and to upload a PDF file of your paper if available. For “Paper Title”, if your paper is in English, then only report the English title. Otherwise, report only Chinese title. Please also indicate explicitly whether your paper is for online or in-person presentation in the field of “Note”.
Submissions without a complete paper will be considered, but preferences will be given to those with complete papers. The deadline for submission is March 15, 2026. We expect to send out notifications of the decision around April 15, 2026.
ORGANIZED SESSIONS
If you would like to organize one or more sessions on a specific topic and have presenters/discussants lined up, please submit your proposal to Dr. Kaiji Chen at kaiji.chen@emory.edu, Dr. Jue Ren at jue.ren@tcu.edu, and Dr. Wendong Zhang at wendongz@cornell.edu by March 15st, 2026. Each organized session should consist of four individual papers. The proposal should contain a tentative name of the session, titles of papers along with their abstracts, as well as names of session presenters and discussants with their emails. Please note that papers in an organized session must still go through the regular paper submission process through the CES website, with the same deadline.
IMPORTANT DATES
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March 15, 2026
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Organized session proposal submission deadline (submit proposals to Dr. Kaiji Chen at kaiji.chen@emory.edu, Dr. Jue Ren at jue.ren@tcu.edu, and Dr. Wendong Zhang at wendongz@cornell.edu)
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March 15, 2026
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Submission deadline for papers in both individual and organized sessions (submit through the conference website)
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April 15, 2026
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Notification of decision
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April 30, 2026
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Early Registration deadline
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May 15, 2026
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Registration deadline for papers to be included in the conference program
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BEST PAPER AWARDS
We will select an outstanding paper presented at the 2026 CES Annual Conference by a junior scholar for the Gregory Chow Best Paper Award. To be eligible for consideration for this prestigious award, the corresponding author of the paper must be a junior scholar who received his/her Ph.D. within the last five years (no earlier than May 2021) and has an active CES membership. The award winner will receive a certificate and a US $1,000 prize.
We will also select two outstanding papers presented at the 2026 CES Annual Conference by graduate students for the CES Best Student Paper Award. To be eligible for consideration for this prestigious award, the corresponding author of the paper must be a graduate student who is currently enrolled in a master's or Ph.D. program and has an active CES membership. The award winner will receive a certificate and a US $500 prize.
No application for these awards is needed since all eligible papers are automatically considered as long as a complete paper (in pdf file) is included in the submission.
PUBLICATIONS
The CES will organize two special issues at China Economic Review and China Economic Journal respectively. Preferences will be given to papers presented at the CES Annual Conference and the CES North American Conference, but all submissions are welcomed. We expect the submission portals to open shortly after the North American Conference and will close sometime after the China Annual Conference.
Papers submitted for consideration of the special issues still need to go through the regular review process. Details about these publication opportunities will be provided later through CES's “Call for Submissions” announcements. We will accept submissions of papers written in Chinese, with the understanding that if the paper in Chinese is tentatively accepted, there is an additional step and approval of translation before the paper in English can be formally accepted. We hope this will encourage submissions of high-quality papers in Chinese on topics that are important to the Chinese economy.
REGISTRATIONS
All presenters and conference attendees must register for the Conference. Registration should be made online through the conference page at Conferences — The Chinese Economist Society (china-ces.org) under “Conferences”. Please note that registration fees are non-refundable. All participants must register by May 15, 2026, to be included in the final program.
You can join the CES and become a member here: Join CES (china-ces.org). Regular membership is $60 per year while student membership is $30 per year.
Registration Fee Schedule for In-Person Presentations
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Before or on April 30, 2026
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After April 30, 2026
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Regular CES member
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US $200
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US $300
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Non-CES member
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US $260
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US $360
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Student CES member
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US $120
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US $170
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Student Non-CES member
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US $150
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US $200
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Non Presenters
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US $80
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US $160
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Registration Fee Schedule for Online Presentations
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Before or on April 30, 2026
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After April 30, 2026
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Regular CES member
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US $100
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US $200
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Non-CES member
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US $160
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US $260
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Student CES member
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US $70
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US $120
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Student Non-CES member
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US $100
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US $150
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Non Presenters
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US $50
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US $100
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CONTACT INFORMATION
For inquiries related to the conference, please direct your questions to the appropriate contacts:
For academic-related matters, contact 2025-2026 CES president and board members:
· Dr. Kaiji Chen at kaiji.chen@emory.edu or
· Dr. Jue Ren at jue.ren@tcu.edu or
· Dr. Wendong Zhang at wendongz@cornell.edu
For general matters and logistics,
· Dr. Qing Wang at wqing@swufe.edu.cn
· Dr. Ronghua Luo at ronghua@swufe.edu.cn or
· Dr. Hong Zou at zouhong@swufe.edu.cn
