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Event

ISID Speaker Series talk by Dr Lizhi Liu ARTS 160

Thursday, February 5, 2026 12:30to14:00
Arts Building 853 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3A 0G5, CA

From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-commerce in China

How do states build essential market institutions when political or technical barriers hinder the establishment of the rule of law? In From Click to Boom, Lizhi Liu suggests a digital solution: governments strategically outsourcing tasks of institutional development and enforcement to digital platforms-a process she calls "institutional outsourcing". Through original extensive surveys, interviews, 28 million proprietary data points, and a field experiment across three Chinese provinces, Liu illustrates how China's BOO-million-user e-commerce market emerged scratch and why this market has profoundly transformed the nations economy, politics, and society.

Lizhi Liu is an Assistant Professor at the McDonough School of Business and a faculty affiliate of Department of Government at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on political economy and emerging markets.

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