On January 16th ，The tenured professor of Columbia University and former chief economist of the Asian Development Bank—— Wei Shangjin delivers a lecture on“Intrinsic Openness and Endogenous Institutional Quality”。Wei Shangjin is a tenured professor of Business School and the School of International Affairs. He is also a member of the council on foreign relations, director of the China economic research group at the national bureau of economic research, and a research fellow at the European center for economic policy research. The lecture is held in conference room 526, Wudong campus. More than 30 teachers and students attend the lecture and had academic exchanges with professor Wei.

The quality of public institutions has been identified as a key determinant of the macro economy. A country's intrinsic level of openness (as determined by population size, geography, and external trading opportunities) affects its incentives to invest in improving the quality of public institutions. He uses a simple theoretical model and ample empirical evidence to verify the role of internal openness in determining governance quality. This shows that in the context of globalization, improving welfare through improving the quality of governance is an indirect but important channel.

The lecture is full of strong academic atmosphere, in which the faculty and students actively ask questions and professor Wei answered them one by one. The lecture ends with a speech of thanks.