SMU SOE Seminar Series (December 1, 2023, 2pm-3.30pm): The Rise of China and the Global Production of Scientific Knowledge

Please click here if you are unable to view this page.

ABSTRACT We study China’s rapid rise as a new scientific superpower and its impact on the world’s top research universities over the period 1996-2016, asking what happens to science when a new dominant player enters the field. Previous research, focusing on different scientific fields in different historical contexts, suggests either competition and crowding out or knowledge and agglomeration spillovers. To understand the mechanisms associated with negative or positive spillovers, we propose a new research design that can be applied to multiple scientific fields in a common framework. We expose different universities in each field to different degrees of the China shock, based on the topic composition of their initial publications and the topic-specific growth of China’s research capacity over time. Net spillovers from China are significantly positive in chemistry, but negative and statistically insignificant in mathematics. To explain the heterogeneous net effects, we explore competition, collaboration and complementarity as possible channels and assess their relative importance in different scientific fields. Click here to view the CV.
		PRESENTER Hyejin Ku University College London
		RESEARCH FIELDS Labor Economics Personnel Economics Applied Microeconomics Economic Development
		DATE: 1 December 2023 (Friday)
		TIME: 2pm - 3.30pm
		VENUE: Meeting Room 5.1, Level 5 School of Economics Singapore Management University 90 Stamford Road Singapore 178903