Gregory C. Chow is the author of China's Economic Transformation (Blackwell, 2002) - see book jacket and reviews are available through the download section.  He is Professor of Economics and Class of 1913 Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus, at Princeton University.  He attended Cornell University (BA, 1951) and the University of Chicago (MA, 1952, and Ph.D., 1955).  He was Assistant Professor at MIT, 1955-1959, Associate Professor at Cornell University, 1952-1962, a Research Staff member and Manager of Economic Research at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, 1962-1970, and Professor of Economics and Director of the Econometric Research Program at Princeton University, 1970-1997.  In 2001, the Program was renamed the Gregory C. Chow Econometric Research Program in his honor. He was Visiting Professor at Cornell University in 1964, at Harvard University in 1967, and at Rutgers University in 1969, and from 1965 to 1971 he served as Adjunct Professor of Economics at Columbia University.  Professor Chow is a member of the American Philosophical Society and of Academia Sinica and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the Econometric Society.  He has served as Associate Editor or Co-editor of the Academia Economic Journal, American Economic Review, China Economic Review, Economic Modeling, Economics and Finance Computing, International Economic Review, Journal of Asian Economics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, MOCT-MOST:  Economic Policy in Transitional Economies, and the Review of Economics and Statistics.  His publications include eleven books and over 160 articles.  The books include:

• Demand for Automobiles in the United States: A Study in Consumer Durables (North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1957).
• Analysis and Control of Dynamic Economic Systems (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1975); Chinese edition (Friendship Publishing Corporation, Beijing, 1984).
• Econometric Analysis by Control Methods (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981); Chinese edition (Friendship Publishing Corporation, Beijing, 1985).
• Evaluating the Reliability of Macro-Economic Models (John Wiley & Sons, London, 1982), co-edited with Paolo Corsi.
• Econometrics (McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1983); Chinese edition (Friendship Publishing Corporation, Beijing, 1985).
• The Chinese Economy (Harper & Row, New York, 1985); Chinese editions (Nankai University Press, Tianjin, 1985; The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 1986).
• Understanding China's Economy (World Scientific Publishing Co., New Jersey, 1994).
• Asia in the Twenty-first Century (World Scientific Publishing Co., New Jersey, 1997), co-edited with Paula K. Chow.
• Dynamic Economics: Optimization by the Lagrange Method (Oxford University Press, 1997).
• Sower of Modern Economics in China:  Interview of Gregory Chow, (Global Publication Co., New Jersey, 1997) in Chinese.
• China's Economic Transformation (Blackwell, 2002)

Gregory Chow serves as Chairman of the American Economic Association’s Committee on Exchanges in Economics with the People's Republic of China from 1981 to 1994 and as Co-chairman of the U.S. Committee on Economics Education and Research in China with support from the Ford Foundation from 1985 to 1994.  In 1979 he was the first president of the Society for Economic Dynamics and Control.  From 1989 to 1992 he has served on the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association.  He has been a member of the U.S.-Hong Kong Economic Co-operation Committee.  He advised former Prime Ministers and Chairmen of the Economic Planning and Development Council of the Executive Yuan in Taiwan on economic policy from the mid 1960's to the early 1980's.  He was responsible for a three-year program (1984-1986) to teach modern economics in China under the sponsorship of the Chinese State Education Commission (formerly Ministry of Education).  He has been appointed Honorary Professor at Fudan U., Hainan U., Nankai U., Shandong U., The People's U., Zhongshan University, in China and the City University of Hong Kong and Honorary President of Lingnan (University) College.  In 1986, he received a Honorary Doctor's Degree from Zhongshan University, and in 1994 received an LL.D. from Lingnan College in Hong Kong.  His book, The Chinese Economy (1985) has been translated into Chinese (Nankai University Press, 1985) and is widely read in China.  He has advised the Chinese State Education Commission on economics education in China, the Prime Minister and the State Commission for Restructuring the Economic System on economic reform in China.  Professor Chow has served as consultant to the IBM Corporation, Data General Corporation and The World Bank.  He has been an expert witness in cases involving antitrust and other economic issues.  He is economic advisor to the Shandong Provincial Government and adviser to China’s Natural Science Foundation, and serves as a member of the Class III (Social Science) membership committee of the American Philosophical Society and on the Board of Advisors of the School of Management of Tsinghua University, Taiwan and the Board of Advisors of the Institute of Economics of Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

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Professor Chow's contributions to economics cover three main areas:  1) econometrics, including the often used "Chow test" for parameter stability, the estimation of simultaneous stochastic equations and criteria for model section (see Chapter 9 of his Econometrics); 2) dynamic economics, including spectral methods and optimal control methods for the analysis of econometric models and dynamic optimization under uncertainty as a constrained maximization problem to be solved by the method of Lagrange multipliers (replacing the method of dynamic programming); and 3) the Chinese economy in a theoretical quantitative approach to its study, with a 1985 book, The Chinese Economy and a 1994 book, Understanding China's Economy.

Contributions to dynamic economics and econometrics include (1) demand for durable goods, Demand for Automobiles in the United States: A Study in Consumer Durables (North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1957), (2) Chow-test for temporal stability of econometric relations, Econometrics, 1960, (3) Microdynamics, “Technological Change and the Demand for Computers,” American Economic Review, 1967, (4) Macrodynamics, “Multiplier, Accelerator and Liquidity Preference in the Determination of National Income,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 1967, (5) dynamic economic analysis and policy, with new dynamic optimization techniques: (a) Analysis and Control of Dynamic Economic Systems (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1975), (b) Econometric Analysis by Control Methods (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981), (c) Dynamic Economics: Optimization by the Lagrange Method (Oxford University Press, 1997).  Served as first President of Society of Economic Dynamic and Control, 1979 and Coeditors of Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control.  Proposed the Lagrange method of dynamic optimization (Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, July 1993 and January 1996) to replace Bellman’s dynamic programming as the main tool for dynamic economics.

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Gregory C. Chow has been a major figure in econometrics and applied economics.Every beginning econometrics student learns the “Chow test”, a statistical test for structural change in a regression.However, Gregory’s work extends far beyond his eponymous test.He was a major figure in the postwar flowering of econometrics, and his applied work included important research in microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics (particularly in reference to Southeast Asia).He has also been a major adviser on economic policy, economic reform, and economic education in both Taiwan and mainland China.

Gregory grew up in Guangdong province in South China, one of seven children in a wealthy family.His father, Tin-Pong Chow, served as the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce of Guangzhou (the capital city of Guangdong, formerly Canton) for many years; his mother,

Pauline Law Chow, studied in England.When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, the Chow family moved from Guangzhou to Hong Kong where Gregory attended primary school.In 1942, after the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, the family moved to Macao.The Chow family returned to Guangzhou in 1945, at the end of World War II.At the age of five Gregory learned swimming and the Chinese art of Taichi, both his father's hobbles, and he still practices both almost daily.

Gregory entered Cornell University as a sophomore in 1948, after one year at Lingnan University in Guangzhou.Being mathematically inclined, he took advantage of the strong mathematics department at Cornell.But in the economics department, mathematical economics and econometrics were largely absent from the curriculum, and Gregory had to study these topics on his own. He learned enough to know that he wanted to specialize in econometrics. He went on to graduate study at the University of Chicago, entering in the fall of 1951.

The 1950s were a heroic period for Chicago economics, with Milton Friedman the dominant intellectual figure. Gregory was strongly influenced by Friedman’s views that economic models should be kept simple and judged mainly on their ability to explain the data.At Chicago Gregory took courses from other luminaries, such as the philosopher Rudoph Carnap, Henrik Houthakker, Tjalling Koopmans, William Kruskal, Jacob Marschak, L. J. Savage, and Allan Wallis.He also attended a seminar on methodology in the social sciences organized by Friedrich Hayek.The seminar’s participants included the physicist Enrico Fermi, Friedman, Savage, Wallis, and fellow student Gary Becker.

Gregory’s doctoral dissertation, which became a standard reference in empirical economics, was a study of the factors determining the demand for automobiles.After the publication of his thesis, Gregory was invited by Al Harberger of Chicago to write a paper extending his work. Gregory was curious to see whether the equations he had estimated in his thesis were applicable to data outside the sample period, and so he developed a statistical test for stability of the coefficients of a regression over time.This work was the origin of the Chow test.

Gregory’s first position after receiving his Ph.D. in 1955 was at the Sloan School of Management of M.I.T., which had the only economics department that rivaled Chicago in the early 1950s.At M.I.T. during those years Paul Samuelson was doing pioneering work in mathematical economics, and Robert Solow was developing the model of economic growth that remains central to current thinking on growth and business cycles.Thus, at both Chicago and M.I.T., Gregory was fortunate to have been exposed to some of the most fertile thinkers in early postwar economics.From M.I.T., Gregory accepted a tenured position at Cornell in 1959, his alma mater.But he found the environment there less suitable, and so he accepted an offer from Ralph Gomory to join the IBM Thomas Watson Research Center at Yorktown Heights, New York, for a year.Gregory so liked IBM that after a few months he resigned his professorship at Cornell to join the company---quite an unusual career move at the time.Gregory was highly productive at IBM, doing work in econometrics, applied economics (including studies of the demand for money, the demand for computers, and the multiplier-accelerator model of Keynesian macroeconomics), and dynamic economics.While at IBM Gregory also applied his economic analysis and judgment together with his econometric skills to advise on corporate planning and to solve business problems for the company.Beginning in the middle 1960's, he also visited Taiwan often and served as a major economic adviser to the Taiwan government.

In 1970 Gregory accepted a professorship at Princeton, succeeding Oskar Morgenstern as the Director of the Econometric Research Program.  He remained Director for almost three decades, stepping down in 1997. In 2001 Princeton University renamed the Program the Gregory C. Chow Econometric Research Program in his honor. At Princeton he continued to do innovative research in both econometrics and applied economics.His econometric research included the study of simultaneous equation systems, both linear and nonlinear; full-information maximum likelihood estimation; estimation with missing observations; estimation of large macroeconomic models; modeling and forecasting with time series methods.Combining econometrics, economic theory, and macroeconomics, Gregory did path-breaking work on optimal control theory and its application to stochastic economic systems.In more recent years he developed and championed a solution approach for dynamic optimization problems using Lagrange multiplier methods.Gregory also published a number of monographs and popular textbooks (his econometrics textbook has been translated into Chinese and Polish). Among his eleven books are:

Demand for Automobiles for the United States, 1957; Analysis and Control of Dynamic Economic Systems, 1975; Econometrics, 1983; The Chinese Economy, 1985; Dynamic Economics, 1997, and China’s Economic Transformation, 2002

From the middle 1960s Gregory became increasingly interested in the economies of Taiwan and later China and Hong Kong, an interest that would result in many scholarly books and articles.Gregory visited East Asia many times, establishing contacts with policy-makers and businesspeople.He observed, and influenced, the remarkable growth of Taiwan and Hong Kong and played a role in the transformation of the economy of mainland China from a centrally planned economy to one with a large and robust market sector.In the process Gregory has become a well-known figure in China.Gregory also did a great deal for ties between China and the United States, including supporting education programs for Chinese students in both countries.His experiences and writings on China were the basis for a popular undergraduate course on the Chinese economy that Gregory taught regularly at Princeton for many years. What may yet become his most influential book, China's Economy in Transformation, was published by Blackwell in early 2002.In this book Gregory studies the process of Chinese economic transformation, as influenced by a combination of historical-institutional factors, government policy choices, and market-based incentives.

Gregory is a member of Academia Sinica and the American Philosophical Society, and a fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the Econometric Society.He was Chairman of the American Economic Association’s Committee on Exchanges in Economics with the People’s Republic of China from 1981 to 1994, and Co-Chairman of the U.S. Committee on Economics Education and Research in China from 1985 60 1994. He served as adviser to the Premier and the Commission on Restructuring the Economic System of the PRC on the reform of China’s economy. He has been appointed Honorary Professor at Fudan, Hainan, Shandong, the People’s and Zhongshan Universities and the City University of Hong Kong, and has received honorary doctorate degrees from Zhongzhan University and Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

Gregory's wife, Paula K. Chow, is the director of Princeton's International Center.Paula co-founded the Center in 1974, with Louise Sayen, as a volunteer organization.The Center became a part of the University in 1978.With the help of over one hundred volunteers, friends and students, the Center serves the needs of Princeton's international and internationally-minded students and scholars.It also has initiatedany intercultural programs on and off campus.Paula is popular figure in the Princeton community, and Gregory often jokes that he is best known in Princeton as Paula’s husband.The couple has two sons, John and James, both engineers, and a daughter, Meimei ‘91, a radiologist.

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Gregory C. Chow is Professor of Economics and Class of 1913 Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University.  Cornell University (BA, 1951), University of Chicago (MA, 1952, and Ph.D., 1955).   Assistant Professor at MIT, 1955-1959, Associate Professor at Cornell University, 1952-1962,  Manager of Economic Research at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, 1962-1970, and Professor of Economics and Director of the Econometric Research Program at Princeton University, 1970-1997.  Professor Chow is a member of the American Philosophical Society and of Academia Sinica and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the Econometric Society.  He has served as Associate Editor or Co-editor of the American Economic Review, China Economic Review, International Economic Review, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, MOCT-MOST, Review of Economics and Statistics.  His publications include ten books and over 160 articles.  The books include:

• Demand for Automobiles in the United State: A Study in consumer Durables (North Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1957).
• Analysis and Control of Dynamic Economic Systems (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1975).
• Econometrics (McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1983).
• The Chinese Economy (Harper & Row, New York, 1985).
• Understanding China's Economy (World Scientific Publishing Co., New Jersey, 1994).
• Dynamic Economics: Optimization by the Lagrange Method (Oxford University Press, 1997).
• China's Economic Transformation (Blackwell Publishers, 2002).

Gregory Chow serves as Chairman of the American Economic Association’s Committee on Exchanges in Economics with the People's Republic of China from 1981 to 1994 and as Co-chairman of the U.S. Committee on Economics Education and Research in China with support from the Ford Foundation from 1985 to 1994.  He has been a member of the U.S.-Hong Kong Economic Co-operation Committee.  He advised former Prime Ministers and Chairmen of the Economic Planning and Development Council of the Executive Yuan in Taiwan on economic policy from the mid 1960's to the early 1980's.  He was responsible for a three-year program (1984-1986) to teach modern economics in China under the sponsorship of the Chinese State Education Commission (formerly Ministry of Education).  He has been appointed Honorary Professor at Fudan, Shandong, The People's, and Zhongshan Universities, Honorary President of Lingnan (University) College.  In 1986, he received a Honorary Doctor's Degree from Zhongshan University, and in 1994 received an LL.D. from Lingnan College in Hong Kong.  His book, The Chinese Economy (1985) has been translated into Chinese (Nankai University Press, 1985) and is widely read in China.  He has advised the Chinese State Education Commission on economics education in China, the Prime Minister and the State Commission for Restructuring the Economic System on economic reform in China. He is economic advisor to the Shandong Provincial Government and adviser to China’s Natural Science Foundation, a member of Advisers  of the School of Management, Tsinghua University, Taiwan, a member of the Board of Advisers, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and a member of the Class III (Social Science) membership committee of the American Philosophical Society.

List of Publications

Document Downloads

Selected Publications:

The Chinese Economy, Harper and Row, New York, 1985.

Dynamic Economics, Optimization by the Lagrange Method, Oxford University Press, 1997.

• China's Economy: Reform and Perspectives.

 
• References
1. Chen, Kang (1995), The Chinese Economy in Transition (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1995)
2. China at the Threshold of a Market Economy (Washington, D. C. :International Monetary Fund, 1993)
3. The Chinese Economy: Fighting Inflation, Deepening Reforms, a World Bank Country Study  (Washington, D.C.: the World Bank, 1996)
4. China 2020 (Washington, D.C.: the World Bank, 1997)
5. Chow, Gregory C. (1994) Understanding China’ Economy (Singapore: World Scientific Publication Co.)
6. ________ (1999)  “China’s Economic Policy in the Context of the Current Asian Financial Crisis,”  Pacific Economic Review, forthcoming.
7. Granick, David (1990) Chinese State Enterprise: A Regional Property Rights Analysis (Chicago: the University of Chicago Press)
8. Ishihara, Kyoichi (1993) China’s Conversion to a Market Economy (Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies)
9. Lardy, Nicholas R. (1992) Foreign Trade and Economic Reform in China, 1978-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
10. Lin, Justin Yifu, Fang Cai and Zhou Li (1996) The China Miriacle: Development Strategy and Economic Reform (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press)
11. Reynolds, Bruce L., editor (1988) Chinese Economic Reform: How Far, How Fast? (New York: Academic Press)
12. Shirk, Susan L.(1994) How China Opened its Door: The Political Success of the PRC’s Foreign Trade and Investment Reforms (Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution)
13. Vogel, Ezra F.(1989) One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong under Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press)
14. Wong, John, Rong Ma and Mu Yang (1995) China’s Rural Entrepreneurs: Ten Case Studies (Singapore: Times Academic Press)
15. Yi, Gang  (1994) Money, Banking and Financial Markets in China (Boulder: Westview Press)
16. Zhou, Kate Xiao (1996) How the Farmers Changed China: Power of the People (Boulder: Westview Press)