The 2023 China Financial Research Conference (CFRC 2023), co-organized by Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance (Tsinghua PBCSF), and Tsinghua University National Institute of Finance, was successfully held on July 1 and 2, 2023. The guests had extensive exchanges and in-depth discussions on the latest academic research on China's finance, economy and other fields.
A total of 722 academic papers were submitted from all over the world, covering a wide range of important academic and policy areas related to China's financial issues, including Banking, ESG, corporate finance, macro finance, labor finance, international trade and finance, behavioral finance, financial innovation, financial intermediation, asset pricing, corporate governance, legal culture, environmental policy and transformation risk, big data AI and cryptocurrency, capital market opening and digital development and transformation, and many others. After careful selection by the paper review committee, 69 papers were finally admitted, and 23 sub-conferences were organized to conduct special reports and discussions in the annual meeting, with an admission rate of about 9.6%. The paper review committee of the annual conference is composed of 90 well-known scholars at home and abroad. Associate Dean of Tsinghua PBCSF, Tian Xuan and Zhang Xiaoyan, served as the co chairperson of the paper review committee.
Conference site
Zhang Xiaoyan delivered a welcome speech. Zhang said the current global economy is full of uncertainties, and an environment of cooperation, communication and exchange is essential to promote the flourishing of finance academic research in China. The China Financial Research Conference aims to provide a high-level open platform for academic exchanges between domestic and foreign financial scholars and industry, encourage in-depth research and discussion on China's financial issues, promote the latest research results to be applied internationally and in the practice of China's financial reform and development, as well as promote the construction of China's modern financial system and financial innovation. Hopefully in the near future, more scholars can participate in the conference.
Zhang Xiaoyan delivered a welcome speech
Wei Jiang, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Finance, at Emory University's Goizueta School of Business, delivered a keynote speech entitled "How Do Firms Withstand Global Economic Shocks Shocks, & Why Is There Hillbilly Elegy. The speech is based on Professor Wei Jiang and his collaborators' working paper " Shareholders and Stakeholders: Within-Firm Responses to Global Shocks” The paper explores the impact of economic shocks from China's five-year Plan on shareholders and stakeholders of U.S. corporations. Firm-level data suggests that these shocks were not caused by a downturn in production or employment, nor were they anticipated by the U.S. stock market, but led to contractions in the targeted industries. In the face of shocks, stakeholders behave differently. Well-capitalized and companies with flexible layout have been largely unharmed by internal adjustments, such as shifting to industries upstream or downstream of China's policy priorities, or outsourcing production to industries supported by China. But the benefits of these adjustments to employees and community economies are limited. The paper tracks the impact of global shocks to production competition, noting that the industrial policies of a country's main competitors also hit that country's industries. This fits with the background of the bestseller Hillbilly Elegy, the decline of traditional industries in the Midwest Rust belt, which is a "countryman's lament".
Wei Jiang delivered the keynote speech
The annual conference has three awards, the Best Asset Pricing Paper Award, the Best Corporate Finance Paper Award and the Best Behavioral Finance Paper Award, to recognize outstanding scholars' contributions in the academic field and encourage economic and finance scholars from around the world to study hot issues in China's finance in depth. Tian Xuan presided over the award ceremony for the best paper. He first thanked all the judges who participated in the paper evaluation session, and said that the annual conference has always adhered to the strict control of the quality of papers, and has become the most excellent international academic conference for the study of China's financial issues. Tian Xuan then presented awards to the authors of the winning papers and congratulated them.
The paper, "A p Theory of Government Debt, Taxes and Inflation," co-authored by Wei Jiang, Thomas J. Sargent, Neng Wang and Jinqiang Yang, won the the Best Asset Pricing Paper Award. The paper combines Arrow securities in the complete market, Barrow's tax-smoothing certainty model, credit constraints, and household discount rates above sovereign debt creditor discount rates to construct a continuous time model on government debt and taxes. In the model, the optimal tax and borrowing plan determines the marginal cost (p ') of government debt service and makes government debt risk-free. The model shows that the optimal debt-GDP ratio dynamic is driven by four factors: primary deficit, interest payments, GDP growth rate, and hedging costs.
Best Asset Pricing Paper Award
The award for Best Corporate Finance paper goes to Hanming Fang, Honglin Ren, Danwen Song and Nianhang Xu for their paper " Environmentally Inclined Politicians and Local Environmental Performance: Evidence from Publicly Listed Firms in China". This paper examines the impact of officials with environment-related work experience (EIP) on local environmental performance. It found that firms in cities governed by EIP had lower levels of sulphur dioxide emissions; This effect was weakened when the EIP was in its second term or when the relevant firm was important in the local economy, while firms in the EIP-governed cities committed fewer environmental violations, received more green subsidies from the government, and set up more polluting subsidiaries in cities without EIP. There was no statistical difference in the economic performance of cities managed by an EIP compared with cities not managed by an EIP. In addition, promotion opportunities for EIP were inversely associated with local emission levels. These findings suggest that local officials strategically invest their expertise in environmental protection.
Best Corporate Finance Paper Award
Zhengyang Jiang, Hongqi Liu, Cameron Peng and Hongjun Yan for the paper "Investor Memory and Biased Beliefs: Evidence from the Field" won the Best Behavioral Finance Paper Award. The paper conducted a nationwide survey of more than 17,000 retail investors in China, combing with actual transaction data, and studied how investor memory affects investor belief bias. The paper found that market fluctuations can affect investors' memories, and rising markets can make investors recall more periods of rising markets and their own successful investment experiences. Recollections explain the cross-sectional differences in investors' beliefs better than actual experiences. The paper also finds that the explanatory power of investors' recalled experiences will crowd out the explanatory power of real experiences' returns when explaining expected returns, providing a memory-based micro explanation for extrapolation of returns.
Best Behavioral Finance Paper Award
In order to meet the requirements of China's Financial reform and opening up, and actively promote financial Research and international exchanges, Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance and Tsinghua University National Institute of Finance jointly sponsored the China Financial Research Conference (CFRC). The CFRC was first held in 2016 and has been successfully held for seven years. The CFRC will continue to promote the application and practice of the latest research results in China's financial reform and development, promote the construction of China's modern financial system and financial innovation, and contribute to the reform, development and innovation of China's financial market.
Session site
