Nicholas Lardy is the Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He joined the Institute in March 2003 from the Brookings Institution, where he was a senior fellow from 1995 until 2003. Before Brookings, he served at the University of Washington, where he was the director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies from 1991 to 1995. From 1997 through the spring of 2000, he was also the Frederick Frank Adjunct Professor of International Trade and Finance at the Yale University School of Management. He is an expert on the Chinese economy.
Mr. Lardy spoke about his new book “Markets over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China“. The book traces the increasing role of market forces and refutes the widely advanced argument that Chinese economic progress rests on the government’s control of the economy’s “commanding heights.” In another challenge to conventional wisdom, Lardy finds little evidence that the decade of the leadership of former President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao dramatically increased the role and importance of state-owned firms, as many people argue. The book offers powerfully persuasive evidence that the major sources of China’s growth in the future will be similarly market rather than state-driven, with private firms providing the major source of economic growth, the sole source of job creation, and the major contributor to China’s still growing role as a global trader.
