Professor Li is the C.V. Starr Professor of Economics at the School of Economics and Management SEM, Tsinghua University, and the executive associate director of the China Data Center of Tsinghua University as well. He earned his Bachelor degree from China Agricultural University in 1993 and received his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in 2001. Before joining Tsinghua in 2007, he was professor in the economics department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.