The Center for Finance and Development, established under Tsinghua National Institute of Financial Research, is dedicated to studying practical issues related to macroeconomy and finance and to providing recommendations for economic and financial policy makers. The Center aims to become an important think tank and will play an active role in international dialogues on economic and financial issues. In addition to long-term themes, the Center also works with government agencies, regulators and financial institutions on research projects, and supports the work of the People's Bank of China (PBC). Research priorities of the Center for the next few years include, among others, systemic financial risks and macroprudential policies, macroeconomic analysis, reform of the monetary policy framework, public investment regime and fiscal policy, Belt & Road Initiative and green finance policies. 

The Center is led by JU Jiandong, who is Chang Jiang Scholar of the Chinese Ministry of Education, Unigroup Chair Professor at PBC School of Finance in Tsinghua University, Director of Center for International Finance and Economic Research (CIFER), Research Center for Green Finance Development of Tsinghua NIFR, Director of Research Center for International Digital Capital(IDC) of Tsinghua IFR. After receiving his doctorate in Economics from Pennsylvania State University in 1995, he served as assistant, associate and full professor at University of Oklahoma and professor at School of Economics and Management in Tsinghua University. He was the Dean of International School of Business Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics from 2014 to 2017. He was a resident scholar in International Monetary Fund, and consulted for World Bank and other policy organizations. He focused his research on International Trade, International Finance and Industrial Organization, and the main teaching courses are Advanced International Trade and Finance. His work has been published in American Economic Review, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, American Economic Journal and other journals. He received 2016 Pushan Award for Excellent Papers on International Economics and 2020 Ministry of Education 8th award for outstanding scientific research in economics.

The Center is currently working on the following research projects:

1.  Systemic financial risks: develop a suite of models on macro-financial linkages, which can be used as a macro stress test model for the Chinese banking system, and to develop a number of proposals on policy interventions.

2.  Reform of the monetary policy framework: explore the roadmap of reforming the monetary policy framework towards a price-based system.

3.  Macroeconomic forecasting and policy analysis: develop a suite of VAR and DSGE models that are tailored to the Chinese economy in order to conduct macroeconomic forecasting and scenario analyses.

4. Reform of the public investment regime: analyze the problems in the current public investment system, and study how to mobilize private capital for infrastructure investment and strengthening fiscal discipline on local governments.

5.  Mobilizing international capital into “Belt and Road Initiative” projects: develop a quantitative country-risk rating system for the Belt and Road countries, and explore potential risk mitigating mechanisms in order to mobilize global capital into the Belt and Road investment projects.

6. Export credit pricing mechanism: explore options to establish rule-based, transparent interest rate pricing mechanisms for export credit in developing countries.

7.  Lowering risk weights for green assets: collect data on the default rates of green and “brown” assets and explore the feasibility of lowering the risk weights for green assets as a potential policy incentive for green finance.

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