Haifeng Qian-IACP Faculty Highlights

Haifeng QianProfessor Haifeng Qian, School of Urban and Regional Planning, The University of Iowa

Short biography and Professional activities

Haifeng Qian (钱海峰) is Assistant Professor of Economic Development in the School of Urban and Regional Planning, the University of Iowa. He earned a B.S. (engineering, 2002) and M.S. (public policy, 2005) from Tsinghua University and a Ph.D. (public policy, 2010) from George Mason University. Prior to joining the University of Iowa, he was Assistant Professor of Economic Development in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University (2010-2014). He was a resident consultant in the East Asia Sustainable Development Unit of the World Bank during 2007-2008. Haifeng Qian was a winner of the Charles M. Tiebout Prize in Regional Science. His recent research has been supported by the Regional Studies Association and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, among others. He currently serves as an editor of Small Business Economics (a Springer journal), an associate editor of Economic Development Quarterly (a Sage journal), and an associate editor of Regional Studies, Regional Science (a Taylor & Francis journal).

Research

Haifeng Qian’s research interests lie at the intersections of entrepreneurship, innovation, and regional economic development. His articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Annals of Regional Science, Economic Development Quarterly, Environment and Planning A, Growth and Change, Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of Technology Transfer, Regional Studies, Small Business Economics, and Urban Studies. He also co-edited a book entitled Geographies of Entrepreneurship published by Routledge. For the past few years, Qian’s research has revolved around three topics. First, he extensively explores factors that can be used to explain regional variations in entrepreneurial activity, especially in terms of high technology startups.  His focuses on the effects of cities’ knowledge bases, labor market skills, diversity/tolerance, and the spatial distribution of federal assistance make unique contributions to the literature. Second, his is interested in the moderators and mediators between knowledge and regional economic development. In particular, he studies the moderating effects of entrepreneurship and absorptive capacity in converting new knowledge into the productivity of regional economies. Third, he is one of the first scholars to develop the conceptual framework of regional entrepreneurship systems or ecosystems, which has gained lots of popularity lately. He has also conducted case studies on regional entrepreneurship ecosystems in American college towns.

Besides his main focus on U.S. cities, Haifeng Qian also studies knowledge-based regional economic development in China. He is among the first scholars who examine the spatial distribution of talent in China. Further, he has worked with the leading scholar in the field, Professor Richard Florida, and tested the creative class thesis in China. They found a connection between tolerance and talent but a disconnect between talent and technology in Chinese regional economies.Haifeng Qian has been an IACP member since 2013.

Contact Information

Email: haifeng-qian@uiowa.edu
Website: https://www.urban.uiowa.edu/faculty/haifeng-qian