The 10th Conference on Asia and Pacific Economies (CAPE) held in IBSS, XJTLU

A conference on themes related to Asia and Pacific studies and Chinese economy took place on May 26^th-27^th, 2023. This was a flagship even co-hosted by International Business School Suzhou (IBSS), Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) and the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) for the 10^th year.

Dr. Nimesh Salike, Associate Dean of IBSS at XJTLU, warmly welcomed all participants to the event, and expressed gratitude for the long lasting partnership of ADBI. He pointed out the importance to debate on key economic issues, promoted IBSS’s education model and programmes, and expressed thanks to the conference organizing and scientific committee.

In the opening speech, ADBI Senior Consulting Economist Peter Morgan, highlighted the key activities of the institute and welcomed all conference participants.  ADBI is Tokyo-based think tank under the theme ‘Toward Sustainable and Inclusive Economic Development in Asia and the Pacific’. The institute is observing 26th anniversary of its founding this year and focused on identifying effective development strategies for Asia and the Pacific, and on providing support to Asian Development Bank member countries in managing future development challenges. Professor Roland Cheo, Dean of the Management Development Institute of Singapore provided the keynote speech titled as “Does educating children improve household wealth in the developing world? More evidence from the Young Lives dataset.” This keynote speech initiates the following debates in the parallel sessions.

The conference featured more than 30 presenters from prestigious universities such as University of Tokyo, National University of Singapore, Clemson University, University of Glasgow, The University of Melbourne, Nottingham Trent University, Wuhan University, Suffolk University, Beijing Jiaotong University, the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, KDI school of Public Policy and Management, Singapore University of Social Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of College Dublin, Henley Business School, and etc.

Across two days and multiple parallel sessions, important issues were debated, such as market structure and firm strategy presented by Dr. Yiquan Gu and regional economic growth presented by Dr. Kian Ong. The parallel sessions covered a wide range of themes in automation, employment and innovation, banking and financial market, health and welfare, corporate governance and regional growth. ADBI organized three special sessions on banks and microfinance institutions, financial inclusion, and energy sustainability.

Each paper was allocated to a discussant who provided constructive comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the paper and directions for its author(s) for further improvement. One of the presenters commented after the conference: “the comments provided by my discussant was very useful. I fully appreciated the discussant’s help to revise the paper!”  During the tea break, all participants shared the joy with the committee members to cut the cake to celebrate the 10^th anniversary for CAPE.

The conference ended successfully with Professor Piers Thompson from Nottingham Trent University providing the concluding remarks. As the follow-up, the selected papers were invited to make submissions to the Special Issues of Economic Issues and Singapore Economic Review. The committee was now devoted to the publication-related academic issues in the next few months.

This conference is part of the efforts of the Society for the Advancement in Economic Studies (SAES), based within IBSS, which has the vision to become one leading research institution in China with the focus on interdisciplinary economic studies.