Barry Naughton

Barry Naughton is the So Kwan Lok Chair of Chinese International Affairs at the School. He is one of the world’s most highly respected economists working on China. He is an authority on the Chinese economy with an emphasis on issues relating to industry, trade, finance and China's transition to a market economy.

Recent research focuses on regional economic growth in China and its relationship to foreign trade and investment. He has addressed economic reform in Chinese cities, trade and trade disputes between China and the United States and economic interactions among China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Naughton has written the authoritative textbook “The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth,” which has now been translated into Chinese. His groundbreaking book “Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978-1993” received the Ohira Memorial Prize, and he most recently translated, edited and annotated a collection of articles by the well-known Chinese economist Wu Jinglian. Naughton writes a quarterly analysis of the Chinese economy for China Leadership Monitor. 

Education and CV

Ph.D., Economics, Yale University, 1986
M.A., International Relations, Yale University, 1979
B.A., Chinese Language and Literature, University of Washington, 1975
CV

GPS Spotlight

Current Projects

Naughton is currently working on regional economic growth in China and the relationship between foreign trade and investment and regional growth. He is also completing a general textbook on the Chinese economy. 

Recently completed projects have focused on Chinese trade and technology, in particular, the relationship between the development of the electronics industry in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the growth of trade and investment among those economies.

Background Notes

Naughton joined GPS in 1988, and was named Sokwanlok Professor of Chinese International Affairs in 1998.

Professional Activities

Member, Humanities, Social Sciences & Business Studies Panel, Research Grants Council, Hong Kong, 1998-2003.

Chairman, Committee on Advanced Study in China, of the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China, 1994-1998

Member, Joint Committee on Chinese Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, 1991-1994.

Associate Dean, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1992-1995, 2001-2003.

Chair, Chinese Studies Program, University of California, San Diego. 1998-2000.

Reviewer for professional journals (selected): American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Literature, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Journal of Comparative Economics, American Political Science Review, American Sociology Review, China Quarterly, Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs.

Publications of Note

Naughton's 1995 study of Chinese economic reforms, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978-1993, is a comprehensive account of the Chinese reform process and was awarded the Ohira Memorial Prize in 1996. Naughton is the author of numerous articles on the Chinese economy, and also the editor or co-editor of three other books: Reforming Asian Socialism: The Growth of Market Institutions, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China and The China Circle: Economics and Technology in the PRC, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
 

Recent Publications

“State Capitalism, Institutional Adaptation and the Chinese Miracle” (co-editor), Cambridge University Press, 2015.

“The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2007.

Co-editor (with Dali Yang) and contributor, “Holding China Together: Diversity and National Integration in the Post-Deng Era.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Editor and contributor, “The China Circle: Economics and Technology in the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.” Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1997. [Chinese translation, Beijing: Xinhua, 1999.]

Co-editor (with John McMillan) and contributor, “Reforming Asian Socialism: The Growth of Market Institutions,” Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.

“Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978-1993,” New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995.