Winners of the Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Awards pose for a photo with Wu Xiaoling, (center in dress), top judge of the awards and dean of the Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance and next to her, Li Jiange, chairman of Sun Yefang Economic Science Foundation, on July 3, 2016 in Beijing. Winners include Liao Guanmin, (first from left), Gan Li (first from right), Liu Zheng (second from right) and Liu Xiliang (between Li Jiange and Liu Zheng).
Three scholarly papers in English won top honors in China's Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Awards on Sunday in Beijing, which signals efforts to draw academic attention to concrete problems in the world's second economy.
The winners were Capital Controls and Optimal Chinese Monetary Policy, The Sensitivity of Corporate Cash Holdings to Corporate Governance and The Brain Gain of Corporate Boards: Evidence from China.
The paper Capital Controls and Optimal Chinese Monetary Policy is innovative as the paper studies monetary policy in a country that features capital controls, managed exchange rates and sterilized interventions, and provides suggestions to China's policymakers, said Zhou Hao, host of the award ceremony held at Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance in Beijing on Sunday.
Liu Zheng, co-author of the paper, Capital Controls and Optimal Chinese Monetary Policy, made a speech at the ceremony held for granting the Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Awards in Beijing on July 3, 2016.
Liu Zheng, co-author of this paper, said that the difficulties lie in how to study optimal monetary policy in a dynamics stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model that incorporates these Chinese characteristics, as this model is mostly used in mature economies.
In his speech at the awards ceremony, Liu said that another co-author, Mark M. Spiegel, asked him to mention their gratitude, as it is not easy for Spiegel, who works with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, to be recognized by China's economics circle.
Liao Guanmin, co-author of The Brain Gain of Corporate Boards: Evidence from China, told chinadaily.com.cn before the award ceremony that he was surprised that their paper would get such an award. He said the study dates back to 2010, when there were academic debates on whether it is a brain drain or brain gain for emerging markets when their talents go abroad to study. Another co-author, Yu Xiaoyun was very interested in this topic as she herself had study and work experiences at home and abroad.
Liao said their study was centered on the corporate boards of listed companies and found that when members with foreign experience joined a board, they bring significant improvement to the company they serve. Through this channel, previous brain drain turns out to be brain gain.
Liu Xiliang, co-author of the book, One Century of History of Chinese Financial Thoughts & Theories, made a speech at the ceremony held for granting the Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Awards in Beijing on July 3, 2016.
In addition, one book and two Chinese papers also won the award.
The book, One Century of History of Chinese Financial Thoughts & Theories, is a compilation of the stories of more than 90 Chinese who have contributed to China's financial studies in the past 100 years, starting with Sun Yat-sen.
Co-author Liu Xiliang said the book originated from their recognition that when reviewing economic literature review, students could only cite Western thoughts, as published Chinese thoughts on the subject had been rare.
"The book took us eight years but even after the publication and winning this award, we are still worried, as it was really hard to be objective in deciding who to be selected and in judging on their contributions," Liu said in his speech.
He said their work might only be a first step to the study of China's financial theoretical history as it has provided something to be examined and criticized.
Gan Li, co-author of the paper Financial availability, financial market participation and household portfolio choice, made a speech at the ceremony held for granting the Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Awards in Beijing on July 3, 2016.
Gan Li, co-author of the award-winning paper in Chinese, Financial availability, financial market participation and household portfolio choice, said China's problems have yet to become mainstream research questions in international academia.
He explained that only 20 papers on China's economy, 1.8 percent of the total papers, were published in the top five economics journals and top three finance journals between January 2015 and June 2016.
Of the 20 papers, only three were about China's special problems, while the other 17 tested Western theories.
He added that there are four papers in the top five economics journals that study migration, as in Indonesia, India, Mexico and Africa. But there is no such research in these journals on China's migration phenomenon, which should be of more academic value.
He said one of the reasons is lack of a reliable database. His team has been building a household finance database based on surveys done in 2011, 2013 and 2015 on 40,000 Chinese households in 1,400 communities in 363 counties or cities and that this database is open to all scholars.
Zhou Hao said the paper Gan co-authored won a Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Award as this database is the first of its kind in China.
Li Jiange, chairman of the Sun Yefang Economic Science Foundation, made a speech at the ceremony held for granting the Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Awards in Beijing on July 3, 2016.
Li Jiange, chairman of the Sun Yefang Economic Science Foundation said his agency decided in 2013, when the Sun Yefang Economics Prize, which was considered China's Nobel Prize in the economics sector, had been in place for thirty years, to set up a new award to encourage financial scholars to do more bold explorations. Authors of an award-winning paper can receive 100,000 yuan ($14,995.65), which is shared. The authors of a book can share a 20,000 yuan prize.
The foundation set up another judging committee for financial awards, chaired by Wu Xiaoling, former vice governor of People's Bank of China, the central bank. Funding of the financial awards comes from the China Financial Futures Exchange only.
The awards are given out every two years and submissions for this year's awards included 51 books in Chinese, 69 papers in Chinese and 24 papers in English, according to the judging committee set up at Tsinghua University PBC Finance School.
Source: chinadaily.com.cn
