Speaker: Professor Gu Xin, School of Public Administration, Zhejiang University

Professor Gu Xin Bio:

Professor and PhD supervisor at the School of Public Administration, Zhejiang University; Chief Expert at the Institute of Social Governance, Zhejiang University; Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Livelihood Security and Public Governance, Zhejiang University; and a member of the Academic Committee of the Ministry of Education-Zhejiang Province Collaborative Innovation Center for Social Organizations and Social Governance.

Professor Gu is currently engaged in research and teaching in areas including common prosperity, social governance, social policy, industrial policy, innovation policy, healthcare policy, theories of governance, and non-profit organizations. He was recognized as a Ministry of Education New Century Excellent Talent in 2005 and received the Beijing Bank Teacher Award from Peking University in 2015. Professor Gu has published several books in Chinese, including 'Towards Universal Health Care: Strategies and Tactics of China's New Health Reform' (2008), 'Institutional Building of China's Social Safety Net' (2008), 'Public Welfare Pathways of the New Health Reform' (2012), 'Public Finance Transition and Social Policy Development' (2020), 'Complementary Fit of Governance Mechanisms' (2022), 'The People's Health (Volume I): Towards Fragmentation-Free Health Insurance Reform in China' and 'The People's Health (Volume II): Towards De-administration of Medical Reform in China', along with numerous papers in both Chinese and English.

Moderator: Associate Professor Bai Chen, School of Labor and Human Resources, Renmin University of China

Date and Time: June 1, 2024, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Location: Qiu Shi Building 347, School of Labor and Human Resources, Renmin University of China

Abstract: Governments overemphasizing economic growth in performance evaluations, known as 'GDP-ism', not only induce short-term behavior that obstructs high-quality economic development but also lead to governance distortions that overlook environmental protection, livelihood improvements, and shared development. Under policies breaking away from 'GDP-ism', by the end of 2022, provincial and municipal governments had removed GDP metrics from the performance evaluations of 495 district and county governments. This policy provides a quasi-natural experiment to study the socio-economic impacts of China's governance transformation. This paper constructs a multi-task principal-agent model and uses panel data from 2008-2019 at the county level, applying a difference-in-differences approach to assess the impact of moving away from GDP-centric government performance evaluations on shared development.