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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:

Political Science March 7, 2023

Dictatorship and Information

Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China

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 such regimes gives rise to the "dictator's dilemma," …
Economics February 3, 2023

The Performative State

Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China

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 China (Cornell, 2022) shows how the state can shape public …
Economics January 24, 2023

Power and Prediction

The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence

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. Banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, automotive, medical technology …
Economics 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 theoretical tools but also the intuition and behavioral …
Economics December 19, 2022

SQL for Data Scientists

A Beginner's Guide for Building Datasets for Analysis

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 the top and a list …
Economics December 18, 2022

Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts

Information, Ideology, and Authoritarianism in China

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.  Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts …
Economics November 30, 2022

The Economics of Platforms

Concepts and Strategy

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 also the very nature of people's everyday lives …
Economics November 22, 2022

Trafficking Data

How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty

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 company to American investors or shut …
Economics November 18, 2022

Outsourcing Repression

Everyday State Power in Contemporary China

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 Contemporary China (Oxford UP, 2022), Lynette H. Ong examines how the Chinese …
Economics November 1, 2022

The Tao of Alibaba

Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That Is Changing the World

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 Affairs, 2022). Brian joined Alibaba …
Economics September 9, 2022

Surveillance State

Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control

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 (St. Martin's Press …
Economics September 5, 2022

Text as Data

A New Framework for Machine Learning and the Social Sciences

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 social world. This textual data gives unprecedented …
Economics August 29, 2022

An Economist Goes to the Game

How to Throw Away $580 Million and Other Surprising Insights from the Economics of Sports

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 sports plagued by doping …
Economics 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 integrate into the global economy. Examining the labor-intensive textile sector and the capital-intensive …
Economics August 4, 2022

The Effect

An Introduction to Research Design and Causality

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. It provides an extensive discussion of causality and …
Economics July 21, 2022

Doing Economics

What You Should Have Learned in Grad School—But Didn’t

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 and the methods needed to do …
Economics July 14, 2022

China's Contained Resource Curse

How Minerals Shape State Capital Labor Relations

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 blessing. Broad-based economic development may …
Economics 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) is the leading graduate textbook covering the crucial models that …
Economics June 22, 2022

Don't Trust Your Gut

Using Data to Get What You Really Want in LIfe

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Hosted by Peter Lorentzen
Today I talked to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz about his new book Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in LIfe (Dey Street Books, 2022) Looking for advice on how …
Economics June 17, 2022

Spin Dictators

The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century

Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman

Hosted by Peter Lorentzen
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globally …
Economics June 15, 2022

The Sharing Economy

Its Pitfalls and Promises

Michael Munger

Hosted by Peter Lorentzen
Transactions have always taken place. For hundreds of years that 'place' was a market or, more recently, a shopping mall. But in the past two decades these physical locations have …
Economics May 18, 2022

Streets of Gold

America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success

Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan

Hosted by Peter Lorentzen
Immigration is one of the most fraught, and possibly most misunderstood, topics in American social discourse—yet, in most cases, the things we believe about immigration are based largely on myth …
Economics April 26, 2022

The Parent Trap

How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis

Nate G. Hilger

Hosted by Peter Lorentzen
Few people realize that raising children is the single largest industry in the United States. Yet this vital work receives little political support, and its primary workers—parents—labor in isolation. If …
Economics April 15, 2022

How China Escaped Shock Therapy

The Market Reform Debate

Isabella M. Weber

Hosted by Peter Lorentzen
China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the …