Mathias Lund Larsen

China Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow

Biography

Mathias Larsen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs, jointly between the China Initiative and the Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance. He is a political economist studying the role of the state in green transition, focusing on the case of China and other countries outside the global North. He holds a double PhD in international political economy from Copenhagen Business School and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He also holds a double Master’s degree in international business and politics from Copenhagen Business School and Rotterdam School of Management as well as a double Master’s degree in international development from Sciences Po Paris and Peking University. He previously worked for four years at China's leading think tank on green finance, the International Institute of Green Finance, as well as at the UN in New York, Nairobi, Bangkok, and Nairobi. His research has been published in Review of International Political Economy, Global Policy, Climate Policy, Regulation & Governance, and Journal of International Development

Research

Mathias Larsen is a political economist focusing on green transition in China. His scholarship primarily concerns itself with what China can tell us about the political economy of the role of the state in financing a green transition. He draws from over 100 interviews conducted in China, Vietnam, India, Ethiopia, and Brazil, to understand not only green finance in China but also China’s role in financing green transition across the global South. He explores how China challenges several assumptions of the literature regarding the political and economic conditions required to use the state as a driver for green transition. He examines how interventionist state approaches are feasible in the global South, under different political preconditions, by using different policy tools, and while facing different challenges.

Publications

Larsen, M. (2023). Adding ‘origination’ to diffusion theory: contrasting the roles of China and the EU in green finance. Review of International Political Economy https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2023.2204532

Larsen, M., Voituriez, T. & Nedopil, C. (2023). Chinese overseas development funds: An assessment of their sustainability approaches. Journal of International Development. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3778

Larsen, M. (2023). Bottom-up market-facilitation and top-down market-steering: comparing and conceptualizing green finance approaches in the EU and China. Asia Europe Journal https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-023-00663-z

Larsen, M. (2022). Driving Global Convergence in Green Financial Policies: China as Policy Pioneer and the EU as Standard Setter. Global Policy, 13(3), 358–370. https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13105

Nedopil, C., Larsen, M. , Yue, M., & Wang, Y. (2022). Prospects of the Multilateral Cooperation Center for Development Finance (MCDF) to catalyse infrastructure financing. Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, 33. https://doi.org/10.1002/app5.345

Larsen, M. , & Oehler, L. (2022). Clean at home, polluting abroad: The role of the Chinese financial system’s differential treatment of state-owned and private enterprises. Climate Policy, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2022.2040409