Nancy Qian is the James J. O'Connor Professor of Economics at Kellogg and a professor of the Department of Economics by courtesy appointment. She co-directs the Global Poverty Research lab, and founded China Econ Lab, an independent international organization that promotes rigorous research about the Chinese Economy. For her Bachelor's degree, she studied economics, Japanese, mathematics, government and minored in Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from MIT and was a Harvard Academy post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center of Government. She was an Associate Professor at the Dept. of Economics at Yale University prior to Kellogg. Nancy has native fluency in Chinese (Mandarin, Shanghainese) and English, working ability of Japanese, Spanish and rudimentary Russian.
Professor Qian's research investigates the drivers of long-run economic, culture and political evolution. She has studied the causes and consequences of formal institutions, such as elections, and cultural norms, and gender preference and racial identity. She uses theory-driven frameworks and empirical evidence to resolve historical puzzles, such as the causes of the Great Chinese and Soviet Famines, or the presence of local democracy within autocratic regimes. Her work spans many current and historical contexts such as China, the United States, former Eastern Bloc countries and sub-Saharan Africa.
She is passionate about using research to address real-world problems and using higher education to encourage the personal and intellectual developments of students. At Northwestern, she has taught classes for MBAs (fulltime, evening and weekend, MSMS), EMBAs, Executive Educaion and Ph.D. students. Prior to Northwestern, she also taught undergraduates.
Her work has been published in top academic journals and featured in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio. She is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, as well the recipient of many prestigious awards and grants. She serves in several editorial positions and has consulted for agencies such as The World Bank, the Global Development Network and the China Development Bank.
She regularly contributes opinion columns for outlets such as Bloomberg or Project Syndicate, appears on news outlets such NPR and CNN, and is working on her first book, which is planned for publication in 2023 with the University of Chicago Press.
