The 321th Wenlan Financial Forum

Abstract：

The policymaking process is often taken by political economists as a combination of social welfare optimization and agency concerns. But where do policy ideas come from? And if proven effective, how do they spread? In this paper, we study policy diffusion through social networks, focusing on local China’s local policies. Utilizing text analysis techniques, we construct a comprehensive database on the adoption of over five thousand policies from two million raw policy documents. These data provide a comprehensive overview of China’s policymaking, highlighting greater innovation in richer areas and increased diffusion among similar regions. To investigate the specific role of policymakers’ social networks in disseminating policy ideas, we leverage networks formed during Party School training programs, which are plausibly exogenous to policy adoption confounders, and show that policy diffusion is more likely among Party School classmates. Our findings emphasize the crucial role of ideas in policymaking and the significance of social networks in disseminating them. 

Speaker Introduction：

Yiming Cao is an Professor of Economics at Faculty of Business and Economics, the University of Hong Kong. His research delves into understanding the institutional and cultural factors that underpin significant development hurdles, such as conflict, corruption, and bureaucracy. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Economics from Boston University and received undergraduate education from Fudan University. Before joining HKU, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.