Call for Application | Research-Track Post-doc at INSE

Call for Application

Post Doctors 

(Research-Track)

The Institute of New Structural Economics (INSE) at Peking University aims to promote in-depth research and application of New Structural Economics (NSE), forging a platform to lead internationally theoretic research in new development ideas, to offer policy advice, and to provide educational programs.

We sincerely welcome talents to join our team in NSE research, promotion and application.

Post Doctors applicants should have PhD degree (including 2018 graduates). Apart from research capability, applicants are expected to provide NSE related modules either in Chinese or English for undergraduates, MBA, postgraduates and PhD candidates. The Institute offers competitive payment and benefits in accordance with applicant’s qualification and experiences.

All application materials should be received by March 5, 2018.

Candidate interviews will be conducted in Peking University on March 17, 2018.

All the candidates should be on boarding before or on September 1, 2018.

Materials required

(can be either in Chinese or English. English preferred.)

1. CV

2. Cover letter (including a description of proposed research related to New Structural Economics for the next three years)

3. Representative papers or other publications

4. Three reference letters

Interested and qualified applicants should send their curriculum vitae, representative research papers, and three letters of reference to:

Email: [e-mail]

Tel: [phone]

For better understanding of the New Structural Economics, please refer to the following two papers:

1. Justin Yifu Lin: New Structural Economics: A  Framework for Rethinking Development

Published on The World Bank Research Observer, vol. 26, no. 2 (August 2011)

ABSTRACT

As strategies for achieving sustainable growth in developing countries are re-examined in light of the financial crisis, it is critical to take into account structural change and its corollary, industrial upgrading. Economic literature has devoted a great deal of attention to the analysis of technological innovation, but not enough to these equally important issues. The new structural economics outlined in this paper suggests a framework to complement previous approaches in the search for sustainable growth strategies. It takes the following into consideration.

First, an economy’s structure of factor endowments evolves from one level of development to another. Therefore, the optimal industrial structure of a given economy will be different at different levels of development. Each industrial structure requires corresponding

infrastructure (both “hard” and “soft”) to facilitate its operations and transactions.

Second, each level of economic development is a point along the continuum from a low-income agrarian economy to a high-income industrialized economy, not a dichotomy of two economic development levels (“poor” versus “rich” or “developing” versus “industrialized”). Industrial upgrading and infrastructure improvement targets in developing countries should not necessarily draw from those that exist in high-income countries.

Third, at each given level of development, the market is the basic mechanism for effective resource allocation. However, economic development as a dynamic process requires industrial upgrading and corresponding improvements in “hard” and “soft” infrastructure at each level. Such upgrading entails large externalities to firms’ transaction costs and returns to capital investment. Thus, in addition to an effective market mechanism, the government should play an active role in facilitating industrial upgrading and infrastructure improvements.

JEL codes: L16, O10, O20, O21, O25, O40

FULL VERSION

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2. Jiandong Ju, Justin Yifu Lin, Yong Wang: Endowment Structures, Industrial Dynamics, and Economic Growth

Published on Journal of Monetary Economics 76 (2015) 244–263

ABSTRACT

Motivated by four stylized facts about industry dynamics, we propose a theory of endowment-driven structural change by developing a tractable growth model within finite industries. The aggregate economy in the model still follows the Kaldor facts, but the composition of the underlying industries changes endogenously over time. Each industry exhibits a hump-shaped lifecycle: as capital reaches a certain threshold level, a new industry appears, prospers, and then declines, to be gradually replaced by a more capital-intensive industry, ad infinitum. Analytical solutions are obtained to characterize the life cycle  of each industry and the perpetual structural change.

FULL VERSION

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3. Justin Yifu Lin and Yong Wang：Remodeling Structural Change

Prepared as a chapter for the Oxford Handbook of Structural Transformation.

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we first briefly review the current dominant framework for macro-development analysis, which is structureless. Then we explain why structures are important for us to understand economic development and how the existing mainstream literature has largely failed in incorporating economic structures in the most effective way. Next, we formally introduce the theoretical model in Ju, Lin and Wang (2015, Journal of Monetary Economics) as a benchmark model of New Structural Economics, followed by discussions on several extensions to the benchmark model. 

FULL VERSION

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For more information, please visit:

http://www.nse.pku.edu.cn