Has China Become An Innovation Giant?

Josh Lerner and Amit Seru sit down with Steven J. Davis to discuss their new study on the pace, character, and sources of China’s scientific and technological innovation. Drawing on millions of patents, Josh and Amit find that China’s innovation explosion is real, covers many critical technologies, and is based on home-grown talent. They also find that universities and small firms play greater roles in the innovation ecosystem in China than in the US. Josh, Amit, and Steve discuss the implications for US policy.

Recorded on October 21, 2026.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Amit Seru is the Steven and Roberta Denning Professor of Finance and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Stanford Graduate School of Business, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He was formerly a faculty member at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. His research focuses on corporate finance with an emphasis on financial intermediation and regulation, technological innovation and incentive provision, and financing in firms. 

Josh Lerner is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor at Harvard Business School and Co-Director of the HBS Private Capital Project.  Much of his research focuses on venture capital and private equity organizations and innovation policy. He was recently recognized as among the forty most influential economists worldwide by ScholarGPS and research.com. He has co-directed the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program since 2010 and serves as co-editor of their publication, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy.

RELATED SOURCES

• “Chinese Sputnik Moments?” by Josh Lerner, Namrata Narain, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Amit Seru & Zunda Winston Xu, NBER Working Paper 35551, July 2026.
• NBER’s Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program.
• “Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty” by Scott Baker, Nick Bloom, and Steven J. Davis, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2016.
• “Multinomial Inverse Regression for Text Analysis” by Matt Taddy, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 2013.
• Related Episodes of Economics, Applied: 
  • "From Asia, with Skills and Aspirations," with Gaurav Khanna, 28 January 2026. 
  • "Immigrants and Innovation in the United States," with Rebecca Diamond, 21 August 2024.