APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall Room C320
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

ljlau@stanford.edu
(650) 723-3708 (voice)
(650) 723-7145 (fax)

Research Interests
Economic development, economic growth, and the economies of East Asia, including China.

Dr. Lawrence Lau, Kwoh-Ting Li Professor of Economic Development, Department of Economics, Stanford University, was born in China in 1944 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1974. He received his B.S. degree in physics and economics, with Great Distinction, from Stanford University in 1964, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966 and 1969 respectively. He joined the faculty of Stanford's Department of Economics in 1966 and was promoted to professor of economics in 1976. In 1992, he was named the first Kwoh-Ting Li Professor of Economic Development at Stanford University. From 1992 to 1996, he served as a co-director of APARC. From 1997 to 1999, he served as the Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). He is also a senior fellow of SIEPR, FSI (by courtesy) and the Hoover Institution (by courtesy). His specialized fields are economic theory, economic development, economic growth, applied microeconomics, econometrics, agricultural economics, industrial economics and the economies of East Asia, including China. He developed one of the first econometric models of China, in 1966, and has continued to revise and update his model since then.

Lau has been elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a member of Tau Beta Pi, a fellow of the Econometric Society, a member of Academia Sinica, a member of the Conference for Research in Income and Wealth, an overseas fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, an honorary member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and an academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Social Sciences, honoris causa, by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has been a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has served and continues to serve on editorial boards of numerous professional economics journals.

He is the author or editor of two books--Farmer Education and Farm Efficiency (with Dean T. Jamison), and Models of Development: A Comparison of Economic Growth in South Korea and Taiwan--and more than one hundred and fifty articles and notes in professional publications. Among his many professional activities, Lau is an honorary research fellow of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Shanghai; an honorary professor of the Institute of Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing), the College of Management, Tsing Hua University (Beijing), People's University (Beijing), and Shantou University (Shantou); a member of the Asian Art Commission of the City of San Francisco; and a member of the Board of Directors of the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, Taipei.

Lau has served as a consultant for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the RAND Corporation, the United Nations Development Programme, Capital International, Inc., Citibank, N.A., the International Commercial Bank of China, and numerous other public and private organizations. From 1979 through 1985, Dr. Lau served as a director of the Bank of Canton of California and a member of its executive committee. From 1987 through 1988, Lau served as a director of Property Resources Equity Trust. From 1989 through 1991, Lau served as a member of the Stanford University Board of Trustees Committee on Investments and from 1991 through 1992 as a member of its Committee on Finance. Since 1998, Lau has been serving as a director of the Taiwan Fund, Inc. In 1999, Lau rejoined the Board of the Bank of Canton of California as vice chairman and a member of its executive committee.