About Peter Lorentzen

I am an economics professor at the University of San Francisco. I head our Applied Economics Master's program, which focuses on the digital economy. My own research is mainly on China's political economy.

Peter Lorentzen is economics professor at the University of San Francisco. He heads USF's Applied Economics Master's program, which focuses on the digital economy. His research is mainly on China's political economy.

Peter's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Peter:

Ken Wilcox, "The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice" (John Wiley & Sons, 2024)

December 1, 2024

The China Business Conundrum

Ken Wilcox
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice (Wiley, 2024) describes former CEO of Silicon Valley Ban…

Samantha A. Vortherms, "Manipulating Authoritarian Citizenship: Security, Development, and Local Membership in China" (Stanford UP, 2024)

November 30, 2024

Manipulating Authoritarian Citizenship

Samantha A. Vortherms
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

The redistribution of political and economic rights is inherently unequal in autocratic societies. Autocrats routinely divide their populations into i…

Lizhi Liu, "From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China" (Princeton UP, 2024)

November 16, 2024

From Click to Boom

Lizhi Liu
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

How do states build vital institutions for market development? Too often, governments confront technical or political barriers to providing the rule o…

Victor C. Shih, "Coalitions of the Weak: Elite Politics in China from Mao's Stratagem to the Rise of Xi" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

October 10, 2024

Coalitions of the Weak

Victor C. Shih
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

In Coalitions of the Weak (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Victor C. Shih investigates how leaders of one-party autocracies seek to dominate the el…

Matthew O. Jackson, "The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors" (Vintage, 2019)

January 5, 2024

The Human Network

Matthew O. Jackson
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Social networks existed and shaped our lives long before Silicon Valley startups made them virtual. For over two decades economist Matthew O. Jackson,…

Meg Rithmire, "Precarious Ties: Business and the State in Authoritarian Asia" (Oxford UP, 2023)

September 14, 2023

Precarious Ties

Meg Rithmire
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Developing Asia has been the site of some of the last century's fastest growing economies as well as some of the world's most durable authoritarian re…

Martin K. Dimitrov, "Dictatorship and Information: Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China" (Oxford UP, 2023)

March 7, 2023

Dictatorship and Information

Martin K. Dimitrov
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Fear pervades dictatorial regimes. Citizens fear leaders, the regime's agents fear superiors, and leaders fear the masses. The ubiquity of fear in suc…

Iza Ding, "The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China" (Cornell UP, 2022)

February 3, 2023

The Performative State

Iza Ding
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

What does the state do when public expectations exceed its governing capacity? The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in…

Ajay Agrawal et al., "Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence" (HBR Press, 2022)

January 24, 2023

Power and Prediction

Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Disruption resulting from the proliferation of AI is coming. The authors of the bestselling Prediction Machines describe what you can do to prepare. B…

Jeffrey Carpenter and Andrea Robbett, "Game Theory and Behavior" (MIT Press, 2022)

January 14, 2023

Game Theory and Behavior

Jeffrey Carpenter and Andrea Robbett
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Jeffrey Carpenter and Andrea Robbett's book Game Theory and Behavior (MIT Press, 2022) is an introduction to game theory that offers not only theoreti…

Renee M. P. Teate, "SQL for Data Scientists: A Beginner's Guide for Building Datasets for Analysis" (John Wiley & Sons, 2021)

December 19, 2022

SQL for Data Scientists

Renee M. P. Teate
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Economists and other social scientists are used to working with data that comes nicely organized into a table with a series of variable names across t…

Jeremy L. Wallace, "Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology, and Authoritarianism in China" (Oxford UP, 2022)

December 18, 2022

Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts

Jeremy L. Wallace
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

For decades, a few numbers came to define Chinese politics--until those numbers did not count what mattered and what they counted did not measure up. …

Paul Belleflamme and Martin Peitz, "The Economics of Platforms: Concepts and Strategy" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

November 30, 2022

The Economics of Platforms

Paul Belleflamme and Martin Peitz
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Digital platforms controlled by Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tencent and Uber have transformed not only the ways we do business, but …

Aynne Kokas, "Trafficking Data: How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty" (Oxford UP, 2022)

November 22, 2022

Trafficking Data

Aynne Kokas
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

On August 6, 2020, the Trump Administration issued a ban on TikTok in the United States, requiring that the owner, Beijing-based Bytedance, sell the c…

Lynette H. Ong, "Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China" (Oxford UP, 2022)

November 18, 2022

Outsourcing Repression

Lynette H. Ong
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

How do states coerce citizens into compliance while simultaneously minimizing backlash? In Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporar…

Brian A. Wong, "The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That Is Changing the World" (PublicAffairs, 2022)

November 1, 2022

The Tao of Alibaba

Brian A. Wong
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

This podcast features Brian A. Wong, discussing his new book, The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That is Changing the World (Public …

Josh Chin and Liza Lin, "Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control" (St. Martin's Press, 2022)

September 9, 2022

Surveillance State

Josh Chin and Liza Lin
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

As we build the AI-powered digital economy, how far do we want to go? Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control (…

Justin Grimmer et al., "Text as Data: A New Framework for Machine Learning and the Social Sciences" (Princeton UP, 2022)

September 5, 2022

Text as Data

Justin Grimmer, Brandon M. Stewart, and Margaret E. Roberts
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

From social media posts and text messages to digital government documents and archives, researchers are bombarded with a deluge of text reflecting the…

Paul Oyer, "An Economist Goes to the Game: How to Throw Away $580 Million and Other Surprising Insights from the Economics of Sports" (Yale UP, 2022)

August 29, 2022

An Economist Goes to the Game

Paul Oyer
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Should you train your kid to become a pro athlete? Why do Koreans dominate women’s golf? Why should ticket scalpers get more respect? Why are pro spo…

Roselyn Hsueh, "Micro-Institutional Foundations of Capitalism" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

August 12, 2022

Micro-Institutional Foundations of Capitalism

Roselyn Hsueh
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Roselyn Hsueh’s Micro-Institutional Foundations of Capitalism (Cambridge, 2022) presents a new framework for understanding how developing countries in…

Nick Huntington-Klein, "The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality" (CRC Press, 2021)

August 4, 2022

The Effect

Nick Huntington-Klein
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality (Routledge, 2021) is about methods for using observational data to make causal inferences…

Marc F. Bellemare, "Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School—But Didn’t" (MIT Press, 2022)

July 21, 2022

Doing Economics

Marc F. Bellemare
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Graduate students and newly-minted economists often find that while their time in graduate school taught them a lot about great research of the past a…

Vivian Jing Zhan, "China's Contained Resource Curse: How Minerals Shape State Capital Labor Relations" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

July 14, 2022

China's Contained Resource Curse

Vivian Jing Zhan
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Contrary to intuition, many countries have found that having abundant natural resources such as petroleum or diamonds may be a curse as much as a bles…

Scott Gehlbach, "Formal Models of Domestic Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

June 30, 2022

Formal Models of Domestic Politics

Scott Gehlbach
Hosted by Peter Lorentzen

Formal mathematical models have provided tremendous insights into politics in recent decades. Formal Models of Domestic Politics (Cambridge UP, 2021)…