James (Jianzhang) Liang

Home Address: Office Address:

331 Alberta Way Graduate School of Business

Hillsborough, CA 94010 Stanford University

E-mail: jzliang@stanford.edu Stanford, CA 94305

Age: 41

Citizenship: United States

Fields of Concentration:

Applied Theory

Entrepreneurship

Labor Economics

Personnel Economics

Desired Teaching:

Labor Economics

Personnel Economics

Entrepreneurship

Microeconomics

Business in China

Dissertation Title: Essays on Human Capital and Entrepreneurship

Completion Date: November 2011

Committee and References:

Edward Lazear (chair)

Stanford University, Graduate School of Business

Knight Management Center, 655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA 94305-7298

(650) 723-4724

email: lazear@stanford.edu

Gary Becker

University of Chicago, Department of Economics

1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637

(773)-834-3452

email:gbecker@uchicago.edu

Nick Bloom

Stanford University, Department of Economics
579 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, room 231

(650)725 7836

email: nbloom@stanford.edu

John Roberts

Stanford University, Graduate School of Business

Knight Management Center, 655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA 94305-7298

(650) 723-9345

email: roberts_john@gsb.stanford.edu

Kathryn Shaw

Stanford University, Graduate School of Business

Knight Management Center, 655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA 94305-7298

(650) 725-4168

email: shaw_kathryn@gsb.stanford.edu

Education:

Ph.D., Economics, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business, 2011

M.S., Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1991

B.S., Computer Science, FuDan University, 1990

Professional Experience:

1999-2006 Co-founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ctrip.com

Ctrip.com is the leading online travel agency in China. The company sells hotels, air tickets, packages and other travel-related products and services through its website and toll free call center. The company is one of the fastest growing internet companies and one of the largest online travel companies in the world. As of 2010, the company had a market capitalization of over 6 billion USD, and employed over 10,000 employees. The company was listed on Nasdaq in 2003, and was included in the Nasdaq 100 index in 2010.

1997-1999 Director of ERP consulting, Oracle Corporation, China

1991-1997 Software Development, Oracle Corporation, Silicon Valley

Research:

“Evolution of the Labor Market in a Rapidly Developing Economy” [Job Market Paper]

In recent years, there was a huge increase in the demand for skill in China as the economy developed rapidly; however, the wages of young college graduates declined in real terms. Alarmed by the seeming over-supply of the young graduates, the Chinese government is considering policy measures to limit the growth of higher education. This phenomenon can be explained by a fully rational model in which the labor market evolves after the arrival of a large number of foreign (high-productivity) firms. High-productivity firms expand the demand for skill which requires both education and experience, and induce a large increase of supply of college graduates. Although the returns to education rise, the wages of young college graduates may decrease if the supply of education is elastic. In the short run, there is an over-supply of young college graduates, and initial wage in-equality exceeds that of the long run. By using a unique wage dataset, it is found that these predictions are consistent with the development of the labor market in China. Moreover, supporting evidence for the theory from other rapidly developing countries is also discussed. Lastly, from a policy perspective, the model implies that there are adverse consequences of limiting the growth of college education during the transition, contrary to some current views in China.

“Demographics and Entrepreneurship”

Motivated by Japan’s recent poor economic performance and lack of young entrepreneurs, I build a model of how an aging workforce can negatively affect entrepreneurship activities. The model assumes: 1) young people are more likely to start a company (to be a risk taker); 2) to be successful, a young entrepreneur needs to have high human capital; 3) a young person’s human capital growth depends on his or her position or ranking in the organization. With these assumptions, in a typical seniority based system, young people will be promoted more slowly when the size of the old cohort is relatively larger in the organization. Therefore, in an aging society, not only there are fewer young people, but even fewer young people with the high human capital necessary for being successful entrepreneurs. Empirically, I find that young cohort size is positively linked to entrepreneurship activity and economic performance.

“Working or Shirking from Home,” with Nick Bloom, John Roberts, Jenny Ying

We run a field experiment on working from home in Ctrip, China's largest private travel agent with 12,600 employees. Employees are randomized into the treatment group based on even/odd birthdays. The treatment group works 4 days at home and 1 day in the office every week while the control group remains working in the office. Since the start of the experiment in December 2010, we have found large and positive impacts. Average performance in terms of phone calls and orders processed within the treatment group has increased 10-15% in comparison to the control group. Hours spent working increased significantly because sick-leave is down by 60% amongst the home-workers. Attrition has also fallen substantially amongst those working from home, falling from an annualized rate of 35% before to 18%. We conclude that with sufficient monitoring and communication technology, working at home is not less productive than working at office.

“Trade, Technology Imitation and Human Capital,” with Gary Becker

Standard trade theory predicts when a low skill country trades with a high skill country, the returns to skill in the low-skill country decrease. However, in reality, the opposite usually occurs. Many countries see their returns to education increase after trade liberation, and subsequently experience a rapid increase in college enrollment and human capital development. In this paper, we examine theoretically and empirically a specific channel through which trade can increase the demand for human capital. When a developing country interacts with a rich country, a highly educated workforce in the developing country can form new firms to imitate the technology of the rich country, over time these new firms drive up the return to human capital, and induce more investment in human capital.

Teaching Experience: Personnel Economics (MBA elective), TA for Professor Lazear

Presentation: “Evolution of the labor market in a rapidly developing economy” NBER Conference on Chinese Economy, September 2011, and at several seminars at Stanford University and University of Chicago.