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Seminars / HenU School of Economics

Seminar Series

Date and Time: April 20th, 2022, 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Room: Online via Zoom

 

Abstract

Randomized response survey methods use noise to mask respondents’ answers to stigmatizing questions. Respondents weigh the preference for honesty against the disutility of stigmatization when deciding how to answer. Since the disutility of stigmatization depends on the degree of noise, the interviewer designs the survey to balance two goals: (i) honest reporting by respondents and (ii) maximization of the accuracy of estimates based on the survey. We fully characterize the non-linear set of design parameter that lead to truth-telling, as well as the interviewer’s equilibrium survey design.
 

About the Speaker

James Fisher is one of our own faculty members. His research in industrial organization and microeconomics focuses on the effects of incomplete information and investment on markets and organizations. It draws on game theory, experimental economics, and behavioral economics.

Date and Time: April 12th, 2022, 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Room: Online via Zoom

 

Abstract

We study all-pay auctions with two bidders and one-sided private information. To sharpen the competition, the auction organizer can either design an information disclosure policy through Bayesian persuasion about the bidder with private information, or discriminate against a bidder by systematically discounting his bids. Depending on the bidders' relative strengths, the revenue-maximizing disclosure policies can take the form of partial disclosure, full disclosure, or no disclosure, while the revenue maximizing discrimination either completely or partially level the playing field for the bidders. A comparison of the two instruments shows that information disclosure is more effective in improving the organizer's revenue if significant information asymmetry is present, while discrimination is more effective if the bidders' expected abilities are sufficiently different.
 

About the Speaker

Bo Chen is associate professor at the Department of Economics at Shenzhen MSU-BIT University. He received his PhD from the Bonn Graduate School of Economics. His research interests are Applied Microeconomic Theory. In particular, he studies competitions in frameworks of contests, auctions, and matching. 

Date and Time: March 31st, 2022, 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Room: Online via Zoom

Abstract

This paper presents a field experiment at a large garment factory in China to investigate how social ties between new sewing workers and their trainers affect the efficacy of on-the-job training. During the factory’s new-worker training program, we randomly pair trainers and trainees based on whether they speak the same dialects. We find that trainers voluntarily transfer more sewing techniques to trainees who speak the same dialects, thus boosting their productivity relative to those who do not. Furthermore, this positive effect of dialect ties operates through non-work-related social connectedness between trainers and trainees. Our results suggest that social connectedness could be cost-efficient leverage to reduce training costs and improve training outcomes.

Date and Time: December 24th, 2019, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the effects of dialect diversity on economic performance by drawing evidence from Chinese prefecture-level cities. Our dataset is a panel of 5-year average data over the period from 2001 to 2015 including 274 cities. We compute five indices of dialect diversity: 1. Dialect fractionalization; 2. Adjusted dialect fractionalization; 3. Dialect polarization, 4. Adjusted dialect polarization and 5. Periphery heterogeneity. The baseline specification is done through a fixed effect model. Approaches, pooled-2SLS, FE-2SLS and IV-GMM, are also applied to reduce the impact of endogeneity. We find that in China economic benefits from dialect diversity.

Date and Time: December 18th, 2019, 3:00 - 5:00 pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

Abstract

This paper shows how property rights security improves over time as a result of increasing legal quality and political democratization in a political economy context, where political and legal institutions adapt to evolving factor composition of land and capital in the dynamic economic development process. There seems to exist a clear sequence of different forms of protection in that it is unlikely to have a strong rule of law with an exploitative political regime, or to have a democratic political system when the distribution of potential coercive power is too skewed.

Date and Time: November 8th, 2019, 3:00 - 5:00 pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of local politicians’ early-life experiences in their policy decisions while in office. We take China’s Great Famine (1959–61) as a natural experiment and examine its impact on the fiscal decisions of County Party Secretaries (CPS) who experienced this famine in their early childhood. We construct a data set that matches the biographical information of 2,831 CPS with fiscal data of 1,715 counties during 1993–2007.

Date and Time: September 27th, 2019, 3:00 - 5:00 pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

Abstract

Using high speed rail connection information and patent citation data, we find robust patterns linking direct HSR connection with increased patent citations between Chinese cities. Furthermore, HSR connection is shown to slow down the delay in knowledge diffusion over distance. And in turn, increased patent citations help promote innovation. The heterogeneity in the effects of HSR connection is also largely in line with expectations, with industries with higher transportation costs and faster technological upgrading experiencing larger impact of HSR connection.

Date and Time: September 18th, 2019, 3:00 - 5:00 pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

Abstract

We examine the general equilibrium and welfare effects of various public policies that either restrict or facilitate migration on migrant workers and local residents. We do so by building a carefully estimated and calibrated computable general equilibrium model and then carrying out policy simulations using Shanghai as an example. Specifically, we use our model to answer whether restricting low-skilled worker in-flow would benefit or hurt local residents of different skill types.

Date and Time: September 16th, 2019, 4:00 - 6:00 pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

Abstract

The interest rate hikes in the United States and higher global risk aversion have increased capital outflows from emerging market countries in recent years. This paper attempts to investigate the effects of global risk and interest rate hikes in the United States on capital flows in emerging market countries on a daily basis during a period from 11 November 2015 to 2 October 2018. Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models are employed to obtain the following main empirical results. Firstly, we found that ...

Date and Time: August 20th, 2019, 10:00 - 11:30am

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

Abstract

In this paper, we first present facts and construct a simple theoretical sketch to show that low product quality is an important reason for anti-dumping initiations. Low product quality could stem from low-quality valuations by consumers or high cost of improving quality. We then use firm-level data from China to test the theory. Results indicate, (i) Chinese exports of intermediates such as iron and steel and chemical fiber products are more likely to get AD, due to the high-cost to improve their quality; (ii) products mostly exported by State-owned enterprises (SOEs) receive more AD, perhaps because SOEs export more intermediates; (iii) firms in western China receive more AD, since the reputation of their products is lower than in other regions.

Date and Time: May 20th, 2019, 3:00 pm - 5:00pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

About the Speaker

Qian Han is associate professor of finance at Xiamen University. His research areas are derivatives, financial market microstructure, and macroeconomics and financial markets.

Abstract (only available in Chinese)

本文通过上市企业的财务数据，从微观角度识别“市场化”货币政策和“结构性”货币政策对企业投融资行为的影响，区分不同货币政策的传导机制和信用分配效应。实证结果发现，“市场化”货币政策和“结构性”货币政策对企业的投融资行为有显著不同且异质性的影响。首先，“市场化”货币供给增加显著提高了上市公司企业的投资和外部融资金额。并且，货币供给对企业投融资的影响，与企业自身的特征和财务状况有关。在投资行为中，“市场化”货币政策对企业投资的影响会随着企业上市年限的上升而减弱，这意味着“市场化”货币政策对年轻企业的投资影响更为显著。而在融资行为中，“市场化”货币政策对杠杆率低的企业影响显著更高，这意味着在货币供给出现外生增加之后，杠杆率低的企业所得到的融资增加更多。其次，中国央行所主导的“结构性”货币供给增加显著的降低了上市公司的投资金额。而在融资金额方面，尽管“结构性”货币供给增加尽管显著的提升企业的融资金额，但是对杠杆率高的企业影响显著更强，这意味着在“结构性”货币供给出现外生增加之后，杠杆率高的企业所得到的融资增加更多。

Date and Time: April 29th, 2019, 3:00 pm - 5:00pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

Abstract

Whether capital is efficiently allocated between urban and rural China can have a profound implication for both production efficiency and distributive equity. However, there is little empirical evidence and analysis of rural-urban capital misallocation in China. This paper attempts to fill this gap. We find that on average marginal product of capital tends to be lower in urban areas, indicating that rural areas face a shortage of capital. Further, we find that rural-urban MPK differences are largely due to MPK differentials across state-owned enterprises in rural and urban areas.

Date and Time: April 24th, 2019, 3:00 pm - 5:00pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

About the Speaker

Kent Deng is professor of economic history at the London School of Economics. Furthermore, he is Director of China in Comparative Perspective Network (CCPN) and Co-Director of the Confucius Institute for Business London (CIBL) at LSE; and is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) and Secretary of the "History and Economic Development Group", UK. Professor Deng research interests and writing includes the rise of the literati in the economic life of pre-modern China; the maritime economic history of pre-modern China; the economic role of the Chinese peasantry.

Date and Time: April 15th, 2019, 3:00 pm - 5:00pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

Abstract

This paper provides evidence on the political economy of environmental data manipulation in China. We use a unique panel data set of 111 cities between 2001 and 2010. The data set includes reported daily air pollutant concentrations as well as demographic, education and experience characteristics of city party secretaries and mayors. We develop an innovative censored MLE strategy to estimate the proportion of manipulated blue-sky days for each city/year. Then we use the LASSO shrinkage technique to find potential predictors of city-level manipulation patterns among a large set of party secretary and mayor characteristics.

Date and Time: April 1st, 2019, 3:00 pm - 5:00pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

Abstract

We model parents´ fertility and child-raising decisions under competition. We show that if the consequences of failure and the intensity of competition are sufficiently high, some potential parents forego having children in the resulting equilibrium. Moreover, parents having children prefer to have only one child and put all their resources into raising that child rather than have multiple children.

Date and Time: March 18th, 2019, 3:00 pm - 5:00pm

Room: A 101 in the Economics Building (Museum)

Abstract

The model considers inputs, outputs, and dual-role factors in each dimension of sustainability. A cross-efficiency data envelopment analysis approach is used to assess corporate sustainability of the power generation industry in China. Results confirmed model´s usefulness and showed that each dual-role factor can act as either input, output, or in equilibrium status.