Guoqiang Tian (; born 1956) is a Chinese-American economist. He is the Alfred F. Chalk Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University. He is Honorary Dean of Institute for Advanced Research at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
Tian's research is focused on mechanism design theory, game theory, auction theory, matching theory, mathematical economics, market-oriented economic transition and Chinese economy. He has worked on mechanism design in various settings including optimal and dynamic contract design, the existence of Nash equilibrium in discontinuous games, auction with participation costs, matching issues, full characterization on fixed-point theorems and related theorems, and China's transition to a modern market economy. He has published over 90 articles in international journals and over 90 articles in Chinese journals.
In 2015, Tian received the Sun Yefang Award, the highest honor in economic science in China for his book China's Reform: History, Logic and Future. He received the Annual Great Thinker award by the China Business Network in 2016. He is a National Special-Term expert in economics of China, and serves as Editor of Frontiers of Economics in China and Co-editor of Annals of Economics and Finance.
Early life and education
Tian was born in 1956 in Gong'an County, Hubei, China. Tian received a Graduation Certificate in Mathematics in 1980 and an M.A. in Mathematics in 1982, both from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He then moved to the United States in 1983, where he received a Ph.D. in Economics under the supervision of Leonid Hurwicz from the University of Minnesota in 1987. His thesis was entitled 'Nash-Implementation of Social Choice Correspondences by Complete Feasible Continuous Outcome Functions', which received the Alfred P. Sloan Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.
Career
After completing his Ph.D., Tian joined Texas A&M University as an assistant professor in 1987, becoming associate professor in 1991 and full professor in 1995. From 1995 to 2001, he was also a research fellow of the Private Enterprise Research Center and from 1996 to 2002, the holder of the Lewis Faculty Fellowship in College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. In 2013, he was endowed the Alfred F. Chalk Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics.
Throughout his career, Tian has been involved with various Chinese universities. He was an adjunct professor at Peking University (1999 to 2002), and has been an adjunct professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology since 2005. He was a special-term professor at Tsinghua University (2002 to 2004). He has been an adjunct professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology since 1993 and was the executive director of Economics Research Center at the institute from 1999 to 2004. Besides, he was an advisor at the International Technology and Economy Institute, Development Research Center of the State Council of China from 2000 to 2004.
Tian was the honorary dean of the School of Economics at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics from 2004 to 2019, where he initiated an education reform to recruit well-trained PhDs from overseas to promote modern economics education in China geared to international academic standards. He has been the honorary dean of the Institute of Advanced Research at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics since 2006. In 2005, he was endowed the Chang Jiang Distinguished Adjunct Professorship, which is the highest rank of professorship available to a social scientist in China.
Tian has been the editor of Frontiers of Economics in China since 2011 and the co-editor of Annals of Economics and Finance since 2000.
Research
Characterization of the existence of equilibrium in discontinuous games
A significant part of Tian's research has been focused on characterization of the existence of equilibrium in discontinuous games. Tian and his co-authors systematically studied the existence of Nash equilibrium in discontinuous games, and characterized the existence of Nash equilibrium by weakening the traditional continuity, convexity and transitivity assumptions. By using very weak properties of continuity, convexity and transitivity: transfer continuity, transfer convexity, and transfer transitivity, he, along with Michael R. Baye and Jianxin Zhou, was the first to characterize the existence of Nash equilibria for discontinuous and non-convex games.