PIIE names Mary E. Lovely as the Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow

WASHINGTON—The Peterson Institute for International Economics is pleased to announce that Mary E. Lovely, senior fellow at the Institute since 2017 and a leading scholar in international trade and investment and on China's emergence into the global economy, has been named the Institute's next Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow. Lovely will be concurrently the Library of Congress Chair in US-China Relations with the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress for the first nine months of 2022.

Lovely succeeds Nicholas R. Lardy, who is stepping back to nonresident senior fellow status after 19 years as senior fellow at PIIE and five decades of worldwide recognition for his groundbreaking research on the Chinese economy. Lardy was the inaugural holder of the endowed Solomon chair, one of four named senior fellowships at the Peterson Institute and the one designated for China studies.

Lovely is known for her record of pathbreaking research across the intersection of international trade and investment and domestic outcomes, such as exports, wages, and growth. Her recent work analyzes China's foreign direct investment policies, how foreign firms operating in China shape US-China trade, and the extent to which US tariffs on Chinese imports meet US objectives. Her past publications have investigated the relationship between proximity to export markets and cross-city wage variation, the influence of Chinese tariff reductions on labor shares of value in its manufacturing firms, and the pollution intensity of Chinese exports. She also studies American manufacturing employment and outsourcing to low-income countries, the role of intellectual returnees in the success of China's photovoltaic solar industry, and the structure of Chinese reforms of state-owned enterprises. She has testified numerous times on these issues before Congressional committees and the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

As the Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow, Lovely will lead PIIE's influential China studies program, working with Senior Fellow Martin Chorzempa and Research Fellow Tianlei Huang as well as with Lardy and other Institute fellows and visitors covering international trade, finance, Asian regional development, and China-US relations. The Institute's program currently includes projects assessing ongoing changes in the Chinese economy, offering policy advice on managing China-US relations, analyzing technology competition between China and the advanced economies, and exploring China's role in the Asia-Pacific. Chorzempa and Huang, both fluent Mandarin speakers, write extensively about current developments in China's economy, and together they have helped Lovely and the Institute forge relations and constructive direct dialogues with top Chinese officials and scholars.

The appointment of Lovely to the Anthony M. Solomon chair and leadership of the Institute's China study program reflects PIIE's long commitment to deepening understanding of China over many years. The Institute's work on China and recognition for that work in China have expanded over the last decade, under the leadership of PIIE president Adam S. Posen, who has himself written extensively about US-China economic relations, testified before Congress on the role of the so-called "China shock" on economic inequality, and chaired high-level exchanges between PIIE scholars and stakeholders and Chinese leaders and thinkers in Washington and Beijing. Chad P. Bown, Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute, has been among the most widely cited and respected economists in the world on China-US trade relations, establishing a trade war "timeline" and a database of the Trump administration's 2020 trade accord with China that have become the foundation of serious discussions on the subject. Senior Fellow Jeffrey J. Schott continues his pathbreaking work on the role of China in the economic integration of the Asia Pacific region, RCEP and CPTPP. Alan Wm. Wolff, the former World Trade Organization (WTO) deputy director-general who joined PIIE in 2021, regularly addresses a global audience on the vital importance of China playing a role in WTO reform. In 2022, Polity and PIIE will publish C. Fred Bergsten's new book, The United States vs. China: The Quest for Global Economic Leadership, andChorzempa's forthcoming book from Public Affairs and PIIE, The Cashless Revolution: China's Reinvention of Money and the End of America's Domination in Finance and Technology.

"I am proud and excited that with Mary Lovely succeeding Nick Lardy as our Solomon Chair, the Peterson Institute goes from strength to strength in China policy research," Posen said. "The evidence-based study of China's role in the world economy, encompassing its domestic economic development and its interactions with the rest of the world through trade and finance, is one of the most important contributions that we at PIIE, and economic research generally, can make to global peace and prosperity. With Mary's leadership, the Institute's community of scholars will continue providing honest, policy-relevant guidance to policymakers and the public around the world for years to come."

ABOUT NICHOLAS LARDY

Lardy, the first scholar to hold the Anthony M. Solomon Chair that was established in 2010, has contributed significantly to PIIE's leading scholarship on the Chinese economy through his pre-eminent research and his notable intellectual leadership and collegiality within the Institute, including the mentoring of a number of younger China scholars. His authoritative work on issues from rebalancing China's economic growth to exchange rate policy and the role of private firms in China's economic transformation has long been influential in policy debates, earning him the moniker "everybody's guru on China" by the National Journal and quotes in the world's leading journals and news media.

Lardy's most recent books are The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China? (2019), Markets over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China (2014), Sustaining China's Economic Growth after the Global Financial Crisis (2012), The Future of China's Exchange Rate Policy (2009), and China's Rise: Challenges and Opportunities (2008). One of his earlier books, Integrating China into the Global Economy, published in 2002, explored whether reforms of China's economy and its foreign trade and exchange rate systems following China's WTO entry would integrate it much more deeply into the world economy. In September 1998, he published China's Unfinished Economic Revolution, a study that evaluated the reform of China's banking system and presciently measured the economic consequences of deferring reform in the state-owned sector at that critical juncture.

Lardy is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the editorial boards of Asia Policy and the China Review. He is vice-chair of the National Committee on United States–China Relations. He received his BA from the University of Wisconsin in 1968 and his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1975, both in economics.

ABOUT THE ANTHONY M. SOLOMON CHAIR

The PIIE Board created the Anthony M. Solomon Chair, which Lovely is succeeding Lardy in holding, in 2010 in honor of the late Anthony M. Solomon in recognition of his service to the United States and the world as a whole, throughout the second half of the 20th century, as well as to the Institute for over 25 years. Solomon was assistant secretary of state for economic affairs (1965–69), president of the International Investment Corporation for Yugoslavia (1969–72), senior adviser to Chairman Wilbur Mills of the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives (1972–74), undersecretary of the treasury for monetary affairs (1977–80), president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1980–84), and chairman of S.G. Warburg USA (1986–89).

During his tenure at the US Treasury, Solomon negotiated the Claims Settlement Agreement between the United States and China that was essential to restoring normal relationships between the two countries, making particularly appropriate the appointments of China experts Lardy and now Lovely to the chair in his honor.

Solomon also played a central role in the creation and development of the Peterson Institute for International Economics along with its founding chairman, Peter G. Peterson, and founding director, C. Fred Bergsten. He was a charter member of its Board of Directors from the startup of the Institute in 1981 and chaired the Executive Committee of the Board from its inception until 2005.