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About Peter Lorentzen
Peter Lorentzen is an economics professor at the University of San Francisco. He leads USF's Master's program in International and Development Economics. His research concerns the economics of information, incentives, and institutions, primarily as applied to the development and governance of China.Peter Lorentzen is an economics professor at the University of San Francisco. He leads USF's Master's program in International and Development Economics. His research is mainly on China's political economy.
NBN Episodes hosted by Peter:
February 15, 2026
The Highest Exam
The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China (Harvard UP, 2025), provides a detailed, research-driven survey of the gaokao, China's high-stakes colle…
February 11, 2026
Governing Digital China
China's approach to digital governance has gained global influence, often evoking Orwellian 'Big Brother' comparisons. Governing Digital China (Cambri…
February 4, 2026
Politicizing Business
In her new book, Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China (Cambridge, 2025), Ning Leng shows how Chinese officials …
November 15, 2025
The Winner's Curse
Alex Imas is the Roger L. and Rachel M. Goetz Professor of Behavioral Science, Economics and Applied AI and a Vasilou Faculty Scholar at the Universit…
August 17, 2025
How China Escaped Shock Therapy
China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholes…
August 14, 2025
Spin Dictators
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning au…
May 17, 2025
The Bird and the Cage
The Chinese Communist Party’s complex and contradictory embrace of capitalism has played a pivotal role in shaping China’s economic reforms since the …
April 12, 2025
Hate the Game
The secret insights of economics, translated for the rest of us. Should I buy or rent? Do I ask for a promotion? Should I tell people I’m pregnant? Wh…
March 8, 2025
Open
Critics on the Left have long attacked open markets and free trade agreements for exploiting the poor and undermining labor, while those on the Right …
December 22, 2024
The Unequal Effects of Globalization
The recent retreat from globalization has been triggered by a perception that increased competition from global trade is not fair and leads to increas…
December 1, 2024
The China Business Conundrum
The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice (Wiley, 2024) describes former CEO of Silicon Valley Ban…
November 30, 2024
Manipulating Authoritarian Citizenship
The redistribution of political and economic rights is inherently unequal in autocratic societies. Autocrats routinely divide their populations into i…
November 16, 2024
From Click to Boom
How do states build vital institutions for market development? Too often, governments confront technical or political barriers to providing the rule o…
October 10, 2024
Coalitions of the Weak
In Coalitions of the Weak (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Victor C. Shih investigates how leaders of one-party autocracies seek to dominate the el…
January 5, 2024
The Human Network
Social networks existed and shaped our lives long before Silicon Valley startups made them virtual. For over two decades economist Matthew O. Jackson,…
September 14, 2023
Precarious Ties
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…
March 7, 2023
Dictatorship and Information
Fear pervades dictatorial regimes. Citizens fear leaders, the regime's agents fear superiors, and leaders fear the masses. The ubiquity of fear in suc…
February 3, 2023
The Performative State
What does the state do when public expectations exceed its governing capacity? The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in…
January 24, 2023
Power and Prediction
Disruption resulting from the proliferation of AI is coming. The authors of the bestselling Prediction Machines describe what you can do to prepare. B…
January 14, 2023
Game Theory and Behavior
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…
December 19, 2022
SQL for Data Scientists
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…
December 18, 2022
Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts
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. …
November 30, 2022
The Economics of Platforms
Digital platforms controlled by Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tencent and Uber have transformed not only the ways we do business, but …
November 22, 2022
Trafficking Data
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…