In accordance to its mission to be a multi-disciplinary research center promoting studies of economic sociology, network analysis, organizational behavior, and political economy, CSES strives to create an environment conducive to research -- both in carrying it out and making it financially possible. Therefore, the Center provides comprehensive administration of proposals for extramural funding, whether for faculty research grants or graduate student fellowships.

CURRENT RESEARCH INITIATIVES:

The Entrepreneurial Spirit and the Birth of China's Free Enterprise Economy
The John Templeton Foundation has awarded a grant to Victor Nee to fund a three-year collaborative research project with researchers from Cornell University, Peking University, Stanford University, and Lund University that aims to provide an understanding of the mechanisms and driving forces behind China's emerging free enterprise economy. Chinese entrepreneurial success is an anomaly. China lacks many of the conditions economists argue are necessary for private-sector economic growth. Yet private entrepreneurs and firms have emerged as the most dynamic forces in the making of China's economic development. Clearly, the nature of China's new private enterprise sector provides an important historical opportunity to understand the genesis of social and economic transformation driven by forces of the human entrepreneurial spirit. Nee's early analysis of China's transition to a market economy predicted that, despite barriers to entry and widespread discrimination, private entrepreneurs would eventually emerge as the leading edge of China's new market economy. This research will follow up on earlier studies of market transition in China to explain how individual entrepreneurs have overcome initial obstacles to build the foundations of a free enterprise economy. The project will be administered by the CSES, the leading research center in the field of economic sociology.