The Salience of Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Online Business

Written by:李志惠 Last updated:2023-09-05
Date
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Topic༒The Salience of Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Online Business

Speaker🎉:Huang Yi (Professor, (Fanhai International School of Finance, Fudan University)

Host♋:Li Dongcheng (Postdoctoral Fellow, Lingnan College, Sun Yat-Sen University)

Time and Date:16:00-19:00, August 31 2022

Venue: Wang Daohan Conference Room,Lingnan Hall

Language: English +Chinese

     

Abstract:

𝄹We explore psychological biases underlying the decision to become an entrepreneur in the online business context. Using entrepreneurs affiliated with Taobao Marketplace, the world’s largest online shopping platform, as our sample, we find that people who observe the emergence of successful stores in their neighborhood are more likely to become online entrepreneurs. Relying on the Taobao store rating system and detailed geographical information for identification, we find that in rural areas of China, an increase in the online rating (upgrade event) of a store leads to a significant increase in the number of new stores within a 0.5-km radius. This effect increases with the magnitude of the upgrade event, decreases with physical distance from the focal store and is robust to a wide range of rigorous model specifications.  Our results lend support to salience theories of choice and cannot be fully explained by rational learning or other regional confounders..

 Profile of the speaker:

Professor Huang Yi joined Fudan University in October 2021; he was an associate professor of the Pictet Chair in Finance and Development at the Institute of Advanced International Relations and Development in Geneva, Switzerland. Member of Centre for Research (CEPR) and Asian Bureau of Economic and Financial Research (ABFER). Former economist at the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF); researcher at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Federal Reserve Bank's Center for Globalization and Monetary Policy, the Financial Research Center of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Digital Finance Research Center of Peking University and Luo Hantang; He is also an academic visiting and guest lecturer for senior management courses at MIT, Imperial College Business School, London School of Economics, and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. Focusing on the frontier issues of international macroeconomics and finance, digital economy and financial technology, and the Chinese economy, he mainly studies global macroeconomic policies and financial systems, digital technology innovation and entrepreneurial business practices. Articles are mainly published in top international journals such as Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Finance, Management Science, etc. He has won the best paper of the Asian Finance Society, the best paper of the China International Finance Annual Conference, the first FinTech Research Summit Award and the Pioneer Award. He has also received major research grants from the Swiss National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.