SCCEI Seminar Series (Fall 2025)

Friday, October 10, 2025 | 12:00 pm -1:20 pm Pacific Time
Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall, 616 Jane Stanford Way

Due to room capacity limitations and high interest in this seminar, registration is now closed. 

Decoding China’s Industrial Policies

We decode China’s industrial policies from 2000 to 2022 by employing large language models (LLMs) to extract and analyze rich information from a comprehensive dataset of 3 million documents issued by central, provincial, and municipal governments. Through careful prompt engineering, multistage extraction and refinement, and rigorous verification, we use LLMs to classify the industrial policy documents and extract structured information on policy objectives, targeted industries, policy tones (supportive or regulatory/suppressive), policy tools, implementation mechanisms, and intergovernmental relationships, etc. Combining these newly constructed industrial policy data with micro-level firm data, we document four sets of facts about China’s industrial policy that explore the following questions: What are the economic and political foundations of the targeted industries? What policy tools are deployed? How do policy tools vary across different levels of government and regions, as well as over the phases of an industry’s development? What are the impacts of these policies on firm behavior, including entry, production, and productivity growth? We also explore the political economy of industrial policy, focusing on top-down transmission mechanisms, policy persistence, and policy diffusion across regions. Finally, we document spatial inefficiencies and industry-wide overcapacity as potential downsides of industrial policies.

About the Speaker 
 

Professor Hanming Fang is an applied microeconomist with broad theoretical and empirical interests focusing on public economics. His research integrates rigorous modeling with careful data analysis and has focused on the economic analysis of discrimination; insurance markets, particularly life insurance and health insurance; and health care, including Medicare. In his research on discrimination, Professor Fang has designed and implemented tests to examine the role of prejudice in racial disparities in matters involving search rates during highway stops, treatments received in emergency departments, and racial differences in parole releases. In 2008, Professor Fang was awarded the 17th Kenneth Arrow Prize by the International Health Economics Association (iHEA) for his research on the sources of advantageous selection in the Medigap insurance market.

Professor Fang is currently working on issues related to insurance markets, particularly the interaction between the health insurance reform and the labor market. He has served as co-editor for the Journal of Public Economics and International Economic Review, and associate editor in numerous journals, including the American Economic Review.

Professor Fang received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000. Before joining the Penn faculty, he held positions at Yale University and Duke University.  He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he served as the acting director of the Chinese Economy Working Group from 2014 to 2016. He is also a research associate of the Population Studies Center and Population Aging Research Center, and a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Questions? Contact Xinmin Zhao at xinminzhao@stanford.edu
 

About the Workshops

Our Young Researcher Workshops offer emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each workshop features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Workshops are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

About the Workshops

Our Young Researcher Workshops offer emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each workshop features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Workshops are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

About the Workshops

Our Young Researcher Workshops offer emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each workshop features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Workshops are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Acceptability and Feasibility of a Mindfulness Course for College Students in China

Speaker: Cody Abbey, PhD Candidate in Graduate School of Education, Stanford University

The college years are a crucial developmental stage during which mental conditions often emerge, including anxiety disorders and depression. Thus, it is crucial that college students have access to resources that help them develop skills for adapting to stressors and flourishing in their new environments. Unfortunately, in settings such as China, hard-to-access mental health services and a paucity of wellness courses often prevent students from receiving the support that they need. This study explores the lived experiences of undergraduates at two universities in China in a mindfulness-based program adapted for the local college student context. Specifically, this research explores three areas related to participants’ experiences: (1) how students believed their participation in the program affected their everyday life and well-being; (2) any factors that students perceived as affecting their participation; (3) recommendations for future iterations of the program. Using qualitative data from semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 of the college student participants, an applied thematic analysis was administered. This study also triangulates this data with open-ended responses from all 41 students who took the endline survey. Preliminary analyses indicate that students experienced positive psychosocial benefits from participating in the program. While they found support from the instructors and classmates facilitated their participation, time-and space-related barriers were hindrances. Recommendations include daily check-ins and reminders to practice, increasing class time dedicated to small-group discussion, and more flexible “home practice” requirements.

About the Workshops

Our Young Researcher Workshops offer emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each workshop features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Workshops are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Supply Chain Structure and the Rise of China's Electric Vehicle Industry

Speaker: Weiting Miao, Postdoctoral Scholar, Environmental Social Sciences, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

China has emerged as the global leader in electric vehicles (EVs), with a substantial price advantage relative to other major economies. This research studies how the density and geographic proximity of the supply chain contribute to this advantage. Using transaction-level buyer–seller data from the Chinese auto industry, we show that supplier proximity increases matching probability and that greater input market thickness lowers input prices. Exploiting policy exposure as an instrument, we further document that shorter buyer–supplier distance reduces prices while improving quality. Motivated by these findings, we develop and estimate a structural model that integrates upstream matching and pricing with downstream competition under heterogeneous consumer demand. The model quantifies how alternative market structures affect equilibrium outcomes. When we adjust China’s supply chain and product structure to match the 2018 US market, EV parts costs increase by about 60%, final vehicle prices rise by roughly 50%, and sales decline by 57%.

About the Workshops

Our Young Researcher Workshops offer emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each workshop features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Workshops are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present. 

Patients' Value of Physician Continuity: Evidence from China

Speaker: Yuli Xu, Postdoctoral Fellow, APARC Asia Health Policy Program, Stanford University

Continuity of medical care is widely observed, but it is often difficult to disentangle patients’ intrinsic preferences from system-imposed switching costs. Our research exploits the Chinese healthcare setting, where patients can freely choose physicians at each visit and flexibly switch across hospitals and departments, to isolate patients’ value of physician continuity. Estimating a discrete choice model, we show that patients strongly prefer to see the same physician despite minimal institutional barriers to switching, indicating an intrinsic preference for continuity. We then examine how physicians’ temporary leave affects patient behavior using a stacked difference-in-differences design. A physician’s absence leads to significant reductions in patient visits, both within the physician’s department and across other departments in the same hospital, with no substitution toward other hospitals and no detectable effects on health outcomes. Patients return to their original physicians once they resume practice. Moreover, patients with more severe conditions incur higher spending when forced to see a new physician. Overall, our findings demonstrate that patients place substantial intrinsic value on physician continuity, even in a healthcare system with highly flexible provider choice.

About the Workshops

Our Young Researcher Workshops offer emerging China scholars an opportunity to engage directly with interdisciplinary faculty and peers from across campus to discuss and receive feedback on their research. Each workshop features one or several PhD students presenting their latest empirical findings on issues related to China’s economy. Past topics have included college major selection as an obstacle to socioeconomic mobility, the effect of a cooling-off period on marriage outcomes, and factors contributing to government corruption. Faculty and senior scholars provide comments and feedback for improvement. This event series helps to build and strengthen Stanford’s community of young researchers working on China.

Workshops are held on select Fridays from 12 - 1 pm. Lunch will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present.