Professor James Kung Kai-Sing is Professor of Economics at the Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Hong Kong (HKU). His research interests are steeped in the economic history of China, its institutions, culture, and its political economy.

Professor Kung has examined a wide range of topics pertinent to the question as to why the advanced
civilisation and economic powerhouse that was China declined and was overtaken by a rising Europe in the eighteenth century. These topics include the underlying causes of the millennium-long Sino-nomadic conflict and the havoc it wreaked, the origins of China’s millennium-long civil exam system and its long-term consequences for human capital development, the impact of the West (especially Protestantism) on modern economic growth, and the effect of the adoption of maize (a New World crop) on the population explosion in late imperial times.

In studying China’s economic history, Professor Kung relies heavily on the systematic collection of data from archival materials and cutting-edge econometric techniques for drawing causal inferences. By constructing
and analysing historical data sets hitherto infeasible, Professor Kung has crafted a unique niche in what may now be regarded as the “New Economic History”— a paradigm emphasising the importance of causal relationships between events.

In the area of political economy, Professor Kung has demonstrated how political institutions and policies in China could powerfully shape the economic behaviour of government bureaucrats, as well as showing how reliance on regional officials to drive economic growth may backfire and result in rampant corruption in an economy that had otherwise experienced decades of sustained “miraculous” growth. Professor Kung’s scholarship in this area of intellectual inquiry was recognised with a publication in the American Political Science Review, the top journal in political science, and another in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, a top journal in economics.

Professor Kung’s research efforts have been widely acknowledged by the economics profession as evidenced by his extensive publication record. His work has appeared in prestigious journals ranging from general ones such as The Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Political Science Review, The Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of the European Economic Association, to the more specialised ones such as the Journal of Economic History, the Journal of Economic Growth, and the Journal of Development Economics, among others.

The cumulative impact of Professor Kung’s research has resulted in his speaking at some 50 lectures and talks around the world in the past five years, and receiving numerous competitive grants throughout his career. He is also an elected executive member of the Association of Comparative Economics and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Comparative Economics and Explorations in Economic History.

Before joining HKU, Professor Kung was Yan Ai Foundation Professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science of Technology (HKUST). He twice won the Best Teaching Award in the School of Humanities and Social Science at HKUST (2001 and 2011). During his career at HKUST, he successfully mentored and placed many PhD students in leading universities in Hong Kong and Mainland China.