TheShenzhen Audencia Financial Technology Institute (hereinafter referred to as “SAFTI”), Shenzhen University,has launched a series of academic lectures to enrich the academic atmosphere and improve the capabilities of scientific research. On the afternoon of 20 March 2024, SAFTI invitedLin William Cong,the Rudd Family Professor of Management and a Tenured Professor of Finance at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University SC Johnson College of Business, to give a lecture on FinTech. This event was chaired by Ge Rui, Vice Dean of SAFTI.
In his lecture, Professor Cong briefed on the key research findings he has recently made in digital economy and FinTech. Here are the keytakeaways:In this paper, we study individual decisions on educational pursuit, influence acquisition, and economic production, in the presence of the increasingly ubiquitous digital social media that are entertaining but orthogonal to productive activities. Recognizing that education not only imparts logic and knowledge but also determines initial labor market placements, we show that either high or low search frictions in the market for educated experts may reduce endogenous education. The rise of the influencer economy via digital platforms alters the allocation of attention and effort, and thus resources in the society. While lowered entry costs to become influencers do not affect social welfare due to competition, the increase in amusement surplus from influencers due to improved matching and amplified outreach can discourage or even break down education. Because of information resonance (only the educated population can understand educated experts), education pursuits exhibit complementarity in the presence of a sizable influencer economy, resulting in multiple equilibria including one featuring inefficiently low education. When societal decisions and public goods provision (e.g., anti-pollution and climate sustainability issues) rely on an individual's logic and scientific understanding, educational externality is further augmented, and anti-intellectual influence that draws people away from investing in education or from following educated experts becomes even more detrimental. Surprisingly, regulatory interventions directly targeting influencers or reducing search friction in the labor market may backfire, but taxing both influencers and followers can mitigate inefficiency.
After the lecture, Professor Cong exchanged in-depth views with the faculties and students of SAFTI and answered their questions about specialized and social topics patiently. The event featured a warm atmosphere of academic exchanges.
About the Guest Speaker:
Lin William Cong is the Rudd Family Professor of Management (endowed faculty chair by the Rudd Family Foundation) and a Tenured Professor of Finance at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University SC Johnson College of Business. He is alsoa Faculty Affiliate at the Cornell Institute for China Economic Research, the Cornell Center for Social Sciences, and the Cornell Emerging Market Institute. Cong isa research associate(asset pricing)at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a faculty scientist at the Initiatives for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3),a Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellow, anda Poets & Quants World Best Business School Professor.Hehas served as a Finance Editor for theManagement Science, among other editorial rolesfor an array of first-tier journals. Prior to joining Cornell,Congwas adistinguished scholar atthe Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Researchandthe Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies, an assistant professor of Finance and Ph.D. advisor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and faculty member at the Center for East Asian Studies. He created the MBA/EMBAcourse “Quantamental Investment” while at the University of Chicago.He initiated and co-founded/organizedthe FinTech at Cornell Initiative, the Digital Economics and Financial Technology (DEFT) Lab,the AI & Big Data in Finance Research (ABFR) Forum and the Crypto & Blockchain Economics Research (CBER) Forum.
Cong researches on financial economics, information economics, FinTech and Economic Data Science, Entrepreneurship, and China. He and his coauthorshave been the first to provethe sustainability of decentralized consensus, analyze smart contracts and oracle network from the incentive gaming perspective,and build thefoundations of tokenomics (categorization of tokens,andcryptocurrency pricing, etc.). As the first scholar to pioneerthe wider application ofbig data analytics and artificial intelligence in finance,Congintroduced text factor analysis, panel trees, deep reinforcement learning asset management models and corporate decision-making models, as well as model interpretation based on multiple sensitivity analyses. His research has been recognized with a number of accolades,includingthe Research Award from theInternational Centre for Pension Management,theAAM-CAMRI-CFA Institute Prize in Asset Management, the“Chicago Mercantile Exchange” Best Paper Award, theFinance Theory Group Best Paper Award, and theShmuel Kandel Award in Financial Economics. Each year, Cong isinvited to speakor present his research papers at about one hundredinternational conferences, schools, funds,and government agencies such as IMF, Ant Financial, SEC, and federal reserve banks.Cong has advisedseveral central banks, non-profit organizations,investment firms, and entrepreneurship & innovation projects,such as Ava Labs, Blackrock, Chainlink (as the first Senior Economic Advisor and Senior Economist), Dfinity, Modular Asset Management, Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, andtheBank of Canada. He was invited bytheAsset Management Association of Chinato teach investment executives. Hehas also been consultedor invited to providetrainingbythe SEC, the US Department of Justice, theFBI agent, theNew York State Office of the Attorney General, and theNew York State Department of Financial Services.
