主持人： 黄少卿 教授 上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院

时    间：2025年 12月17日（周三）14:00-15:30

地    点:  上海交通大学徐汇校区安泰经济与管理学院B207

内容简介：

We use randomized referrals to improve firm-to-firm access between 700 supplier and client firms in China doing business in the same county and industry. We establish two main results. (1) A key barrier to access is pessimistic beliefs about the value of partners. Information about the partner does not, but a small subsidy does lead to new partnerships. New partners increase firms' beliefs about and search for additional partners, as well as the number of non-referred partners. (2) Access changes industry equilibrium by expanding, not just reallocating, the production network and economic activity. Firms increase the number of partners and improve business performance; suppliers and clients engage in complementary upgrading in quality and variety; and detectable indirect effects are positive. These results are consistent with a framework in which access improves performance by creating new business ideas, and suggest that improving access may be important even in contexts that lack tangible barriers.

演讲人简介：

Jing Cai is the John R. and Marjorie C. Moore Associate Professor in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland. She received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 2012. Her research areas are development economics and household finance, with a focus on how financial and organizational innovations can improve welfare and productivity in developing countries. Much of her work uses field experiments and self-collected data to test economic theories and evaluate new policy innovations. Her research has been published in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Review and Quarterly Journal of Economics.  Professor Cai is a board member and co-chair of the firm sector of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a fellow of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), and a research affiliate of the International Growth Center (IGC). She currently serves as Co-Editor of the Journal of Development Economics and is on the Board of Editors of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.