Woo Wing Thye
Woo Wing Thye (Chinese name: 胡永泰) is a Malaysian-American economist. He is currently Professor of Economics at University of California, Davis. He is the President of the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia[1] and Director of the Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development at Sunway University in Malaysia[2] and holds academic positions at the Penang Institute in George Town, Malaysia[1], Fudan University [3] in Shanghai, and the Institute of Population and Labour Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.
Woo Wing Thye | |
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Professor Woo Wing Thye | |
Born | 1954 |
Nationality | United States |
Institution | University of California, Davis Sunway University Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia |
Alma mater | Swarthmore College Yale University Harvard University |
Contributions | Transition Economics Open economy macroeconomics East Asian Economies |
Information at IDEAS / RePEc |
Professor Woo is also Director of the East Asia Program within the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University[4], and a member of the International Advisory Council at the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE)[5].
Woo is an expert on East Asian economies[6][7][8] particularly China, Malaysia and Indonesia. He has written extensively on the middle-income trap[9][10] as well as on transition economics, globalization, exchange rate economics and regional economic disparity.
He earned his PhD from Harvard University in 1982 with a thesis entitled 'Exchange rate determination under rational expectations : a structural approach'.[11]
Biography
Woo was born in 1954 in George Town, Penang. Following undergraduate study in economics and engineering at Swarthmore College, he took an MA in Economics at Yale and, later an MA and Ph.D at Harvard (1982). Woo joined the economics faculty at the University of California, Davis in 1985.
Woo has worked as a consultant on tax and exchange rate reform for China's Ministry of Finance and, between 1994 and 1996, led an international team, which included Leszek Balcerowicz, Boris Fyodorov, Fan Gang and Jeffrey D. Sachs to study the reform experiences of centrally planned economies. From 1997-1998, he was a special advisor to the U.S. Treasury.
In 2001, Woo helped establish the Asian Economic Panel (AEP), a forum of about 80 specialists on Asian economies, which meets three times a year to discuss issues of importance to the region's economies. Selected proceedings of the AEP are published in the Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press.[12]
From 2002 until 2005, Woo was a special advisor for East Asian Economies to the UN Millennium Project. In 2007, Woo served on the International Advisory Council at the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE).[13] In July 2005, he was appointed to the International Advisory Panel for Malaysia's then Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and an economics advisor to the state of Penang in April 2008. He was Executive Director of the Penang Institute, the Penang State Government's public policy think tank between 2012 and 2013 and was appointed the founding President [14] of the Jeffrey Cheah Institute (JCI) on Southeast Asia in 2014. JCI is an independent think tank, established in Malaysia by the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation, to conduct policy-oriented research on Southeast Asia.
Research Interests
Professor Woo's academic and research interests focus on economies in transition, notably China, Malaysia and Indonesia. His research covers China's economic reforms [15] as well as its sources of growth [16] and the wealth gap, which Woo argues has been significantly understated.[17][18]
Woo was recently described as, "one of the world's foremost experts on the Chinese economy," [19][20] and appears regularly in the media.[21][22][23] He is also a contributor to Project Syndicate.[8]
References
- "President - Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia". Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia. Retrieved 2018-01-22.
- "Our People | Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development Sunway University, Malaysia". jeffreysachs.center. Retrieved 2018-01-22.
- http://www.econ.fudan.edu.cn/teacheracademician.php?pid=41
- "Dr. Wing Thye Woo - Directory - The Earth Institute - Columbia University". www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2018-01-22.
- "Wing Thye Woo". Retrieved 2018-01-22.
- http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2014/07/07/dinner-with-wing-thye-woo/
- http://www.lowyinstitute.org/news-and-media/audio/podcast-future-renminbi-wing-thye-woo-stephen-grenville
- http://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/wing-t--woo
- Wing Thye Woo (2011). "Understanding the Middle-Income Trap in Economic Development: The Case of Malaysia," invited World Economy Lecture delivered at the University of Nottingham, Globalisation and Economic Policy conference, Globalisation Trends and Cycles: The Asian Experiences, Malaysia, 13 January 2011; available at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/gep/documents/lectures/world-economy-asia-lectures/world-econ-asia-wing-thye-woo-2011.pdf
- Wing Thye Woo (November 2012). "China meets the middle-income trap: the large potholes in the road to catching-up". Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies V10N4: 313-336
- http://www.worldcat.org/title/exchange-rate-determination-under-rational-expectations-a-structural-approach/oclc/9550912
- http://mitpress.mit.edu/content/asian-economic-papers
- http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/preface3.htm
- http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Education/2014/02/09/Finance-expert-helms-institute/
- Woo, Wing Thye; Jeffrey Sachs (April 1994), "Structural factors in the economic reforms of China, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union." (http://www.ucdavis.edu/faculty/woo/Sachs-Woo%20Structural%20factors%20in%20the%20econoic%20reforms%20of%20China%20and%20EEFSU.pdf). Economic Policy: 102-45
- Woo, Wing Thye (January 1999). "Real Reasons for China's Growth" The China Journal
- Woo, Wing Thye, Ming Lu, Jeffrey D. Sachs & Zhao Chen (2012). A New Economic Growth Engine for China: Escaping the Middle-Income Trap by not doing more of the same. (http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/8598). Hackensack, New Jersey: World Scientific. p. 208. ISBN 978-981-4425-53-7
- Woo, Wing Thye (2012). "China meets the middle-income trap: the large potholes in the road to catching-up." Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies V10N4: 313-336
- https://soundcloud.com/lowyinstitute/the-future-of-the-renminbi-wing-thye-woo-stephen-grenville
- http://www.c-span.org/video/?284094-2/chinese-economic-outlook
- http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-10/extended-interview-with-wing-thye-woo/5588858
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJoTmnYzTIU
- http://www.iptv.org/series.cfm/12638/foreign_exchange_with_fareed/ep:305/episodes