We are thrilled to announce that Adam Yao Liu has been awarded the 2020 BRICS Economic Research Award from Exim Bank for his Stanford Ph.D. dissertation, “Building Markets within Authoritarian Institutions: The Political Economy of Banking Development in China.” The award recognizes research that promotes greater understanding of international economics, trade, developing, and related financing, particularly as is relates to member nations of the BRICS Interbank Cooperation Mechanism. Liu is a former student of APARC’s China Program Director Jean Oi and graduated from Stanford's doctoral program in political science in 2018. He is currently an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore.

Liu’s research focuses on comparative political economy, the political economy of finance, authoritarian politics, and contemporary Chinese politics. His award-winning dissertation brings together all of these interests to explain how and why the number of commercial banks in China has exponentially grown in recent decades despite the absence of meaningful, structural political change. It also examines the distributive consequences this banking proliferation has on China’s economy.

This research builds on Liu’s earlier work creating a spatial data set on every bank ever built in the PRC. This data, which is the first formalized measurement of its kind, includes information on the location, ownership, and operation status of each institution, and provides a foundational basis for future analysis and understanding of how banking functions across Chinese society and local economies.

Congratulations, Dr. Liu, for your award and ongoing work!