Background
Zhang Weiying was born in 1959 in Wubao County, Shaanxi Province.
维迎 张
Zhang Weiying was born in 1959 in Wubao County, Shaanxi Province.
Zhang Weiying graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1982, and a master's degree in 1984, from Northwest University (China). He received his M. Phil. in economics in 1992 and D. Phil. in economics from Oxford University. His D. Phil. supervisors were James Mirrlees (1996 Nobel Laureate) and Donald Hay. Between 1984 and 1990, he was a research fellow of the Economic System Reform Institute of China under the State Commission of Restructuring Economic System.
In August 1994, he returned to China and began working for Peking University, where he currently teaches courses on ‘Game and society’, ‘Theory of the firm’, ‘Managerial economics’, and ‘Incentive and corporate governance’.
Zhang is well known as the Chinese economist who first proposed the ‘dual-track price system reform’ in 1984. He is also known for his contributions to macro-control policy debates, ownership reform debates, and entrepreneurship studies. When he first returned from Oxford, Zhang co-founded the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University in 1994, and worked with the center first as an associate professor and then as a professor until August 1997. He relocated to Guanghua School of Management in September 1997. Not only has he played a significant role in transforming business education in China, Zhang was also the chief architect of the Peking University faculty system reform in 2003.
Being one of the most referenced contemporary Chinese economists, Zhang’s research focuses on industrial organization, corporate governance, information economics, and Chinese economic reform. He is widely recognized as an authority on the theory of the firm and ownership reform in China. This is reflected in his impressive record of publications, which include ten books and numerous academic articles to date. Most of his books are written in Chinese, the most representative of which include Entrepreneurial- Contractual Theory of the Firm (1995), Game and Information Economics (1996), Information, Trust and Law (2003), The Logic of the University (2004, 2006), Ownership, Incentive and Corporate Governance (2005), Core Competence and Growth of the Firm (2006), and Price, Market and Entrepreneurship (2006). His academic papers have appeared in prestigious international journals in economics, such as the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and the Journal of Comparative Economics, as well as in top Chinese journals including the Economic Research Journal and the Journal of Reform.