Yasheng Huang is an associate professor in the area of international management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He joined MIT in 2003. His previous appointments include assistant professor at the University of Michigan, associate professor at Harvard University, and consultant to the World Bank.
Professor Huang's research focuses on international business, political economy, and institutional issues. His recently published book, Selling China (Cambridge University Press, 2003) examines the institutional drivers of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China. Unlike many other studies of FDI in China, this book shows that some of the inefficiencies of China's financial and legal institutions have served to drive up FDI inflows. The principal effect of these inefficiencies is a lowering of the average level of competitiveness of domestic firms, which creates a number of propitious conditions for foreign firms.
Yasheng Huang is extending this way of looking at FDI-examining the competitiveness of domestic firms-to other countries by analyzing the institutional environment for local firms and entrepreneurship. He is currently working on projects on private sector development in China and in India and is writing several papers on the institutional determinants of foreign ownership and FDI.
