The Chinese Economist Society (CES) hosted its 2023 North American conference from March 30 to April 2 at the University of Oklahoma (OU), Norman, OK. This is our first in-person annual conference in North America since 2019. Thanks to the diligent work of our organizing committee members, the conference was a huge success with a total of 156 submissions and 170 participants on the program.
The conference took a hybrid format, including ten online sessions to allow for remote participation. In addition, there were 37 in-person sessions, including two keynote addresses, four invited speakers sessions, eight rising star sessions, and 23 parallel sessions. This is the first year CES hosted rising star sessions, where the presenters were all Ph.D. students. We invited established scholars as discussants and session chairs to provide valuable opportunities for students to receive feedback and network with experienced researchers.
The rising star sessions were followed by a welcome reception on the evening of March 31, sponsored by the Department of Economics at OU and the China-United States Exchange Foundation (Hong Kong). The conference was formally opened on the morning of April 1 with remarks from Qihong Liu, President of CES; Greg Burge, OU Economics Department Chair. David Wrobel, Dean of Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences at OU gave a warm welcome to conference participants and acknowledged the important role Economics Department has played in the college and beyond.
This conference featured two keynote speeches by prominent economists Judith Chevalier from Yale University and Daniel Xu from Duke University. We also had the privilege to have eight invited speakers, including Yongmin Chen from the University of Colorado Boulder, Anthony Dukes from the University of Southern California, Suqin Ge from Virginia Tech, Zhiguo He from the University of Chicago, Shanjun Li from Cornell University, Scott Rozelle from Stanford University, Tao Zha from Federal Reserve Bank Atlanta, and Eric Zou from the University of Oregon. Their speeches touched upon a wide variety of topics ranging from consumer search and retail competition, economic growth in China, China’s environmental overhaul as well as the financial market and fintech development in China.
CES acknowledges generous financial and logistical support from our cohost, the Department of Economics at the University of Oklahoma, and various sponsors from OU (particularly the Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships, Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, Price College of Business), Hefei University of Technology (School of Economics) and Liaoning University (Li Anmin Research Institute), among others. Their financial support is critical in allowing CES to provide travel support to a record number of applications from Ph.D. students.