苏基朗，香港科技大学人文学部讲座教授及学部主任。历任香港中文大学历史系讲座教授、教务长及协理副校长。研究范围包括中国法律文化史、中国制度经济史、中国历史地理、唐宋史等。主要著作有Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien Pattern, 946-1368 (2000; 中译《刺桐梦华录：近世前期闽南市场经济史》即将出版)、Treaty-port Economy in Modern China: Empirical Studies of Institutional Change and Economic Performance (co-edited with Ramon H. Myers; 2011)等。

马若孟，美国西雅图华盛顿大学经济学博士，斯坦福大学胡佛研究院荣誉资深研究员(Senior Fellow Emeritus)。

Through eight empirical studies, this volume explores the interplay between institutional change and economic performance in a constructed model of the treaty port economy in late-Qing and Republican China.

"Where previous generations of researchers sought to account for China's failures, we now face the novel problem of explaining massive success. This volume offers a timely reappraisal of circumstances in China's treaty ports, one of many legacies underpinning today's economic boom. The emphasis on institutions, a topic that recent studies tend to sidestep, adds to the value of the lively empirical studies in this new book."

–Thomas G. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh

"These studies of institutional changes in China's treaty port economies introduce the challenges and potential payoffs of understanding how institutions aff ect economic performance. With rich and diverse empirical material, they provide perspective on more recent Chinese economic reforms and the ways in which economic growth need neither intend nor result in prosperity for all."

–R. Bin Wong, University of California, Los Angeles