From June 12 to 13, the 2019 Summer Industry Economics Frontier Training of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics was held in the lecture hall on the second floor of the College of Business. This training has attracted more than 100 young teachers and graduate students from major universities and research institutions across the country. Associate Professor Heng Ju, Director of the Department of Industry Economics, College of Business, presided over the training course.
The training lasted for 2 days, inviting Paul Grieco, an associate professor of Economics Department at Pennsylvania State University, Jakub Kastl, a professor of Economics Department at Princeton University, Peter Newberry, an assistant professor of Economics Department at Pennsylvania State University and Steven Tadelis, a professor at University of California-Berkeley, Haas School of Business.
Professor Paul Grieco presented research on the retail market. The retail market is an important part of the economy, with direct access to consumer demand. To study the retail market, we need to consider its unique characteristics: the importance of location selection of retail enterprises (shopping malls), the complexity of pricing products sold in shopping malls, the diversity of retail enterprises and the more common chain supermarkets in modern economies.
Professor Jukub Kastl introduced the application of auction theory in financial markets. In industrial organization theory, there are systematic and detailed theoretical and empirical studies on auctions and Professor Kastl focused on how these theories can be applied to financial markets. According to Professor Kastl, empirical industrial organizations provide a lot of analytical tools and he encourages people to think about how to apply these tools to other areas of economics.
Online retail is becoming more and more important and its proportion in the retail industry is increasing year by year. Online trading platform presents characteristics of the price dispersion and business sales’ long tail. Professor Newberry mainly analyzed the reasons behind these characteristics: information problems and information search of consumers and the differences of online platforms. At teh end, Professor Newberry introduced the research on Taobao by him and his domestic partners.
Professor Tadelis mainly analyzed the promotion effect of credit scoring system on the development of online trading platform. Professor Tadelis theorized that credit scores can help consumers distinguish between sellers. In practice, Professor Tadelis used eBay as an example to introduce the initial construction of a credit scoring system. At the end, Professor Tadelis also introduced a research by collaboration with domestic scholars to analyze the effectiveness of the Taobao platform in encouraging consumers to score with cash rewards.
Industry Economics Frontier Training of College of Business, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics is one of the summer training programs in the three fields of international trade, industry economics and international finance by College of Business of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. Every year, the summer training program invites scholars from top international universities and research institutions as training teachers. The program is committed to the improvement of the national faculty in discipline of industry economics and the cultivation of high-end talents to promote international academic exchanges in the professional field.