Keynote Speakers

Dr. Jian Chen, Associate Professor

Belt and Road School, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

Biography: Dr. Jian Chen is an Associate Professor at Belt and Road School, and International Business Faculty, Beijing Normal University, Visiting Scholar at De Montfort University (UK) Business School(2004), Visiting Scholar at Gloucestershire University (UK) (2006.9-2007,2), Visiting Scholar(2016.3-2017.3) supported by the Chinese National Scholarship Council(CSC), Research Fellow in the Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development and the School of Business and Law, De Montfort University (UK). She received her doctorate degree in Management from Huazhong Agricultural University and her master degree from Wuhan University. She has participated in 4 international projects, 8 provincial projects, chaired 10 city projects, 7 school-level projects; 1 social science project in Hubei Province, and 2nd excellent economic and social development research project in Meizhou City Awards, Guangdong Province, presided over the University’s Teaching Quality Project of the school-level by the courses of: "Organizational Behavior", "Principles of Management", "Enterprise Strategic Management". She has published 91 academic papers, including 3SCI journals,4 CSSCI journals, 3 ISTP papers, and 4 core journals of CSTPCD, with 2 works, 1 textbook, and 3 joints.

Topic: Analysis on China’s Investment Distribution and Risk Prevention of "the Belt and Road" Countries

Abstract: The study first analyzes the necessity of country risk assessment for "the Belt and Road" investment. Then the author presents the investment distribution characteristics of "the Belt and Road" countries, thus builds up "the Belt and Road" investment country risk evaluation index system with 5 dimensions and 25 indicators and Evaluation model. At last, the authors concludes with some dynamic characteristics of national investment and risk prevention strategies.

Dr. Peiwen Bai, Professor

School of Economics, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

Biography: Dr. Peiwen Bai currently works as a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Economics of Xiamen University, deputy director of the Economic Research Institute, deputy editor of "China Economic Issues", visiting scholar at Monash University, chief expert of major projects of the National Social Science Fund, and vice president of the Fujian Economic Association. He received a doctorate in management from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2006. His research areas are the digital economy and income distribution. He has published over 80 papers as first author in domestic and foreign journals. He has participated in and chaired research on multiple projects, including the National Social Science Fund Major Project and the Ministry of Education Major Project.

Topic: Digital Economy Development and Markup of Firm

Abstract: The integration of the digital economy with the real economy is a major issue for sustainable economic development in the new era. A large amount of economics literature focuses on the benefits of digital economy, such as increased productivity, increased innovation and improved organizational structure of firms. However, little literature has explored the costs of digital economy development to firms, such as increased competition and rising cost pressures. In this paper, we use the markup of firms as a combined reflection of the net value of these two effects, and theoretically construct a variable markup model to explore the mechanism. Further, this paper uses data on Chinese industrial firms from 2004-2013, combined with the newly developed imperfect instrumental variables method. It is found that digital economy development significantly reduces markup of firms, with a robust upper bound of -0.31%. The analysis of the mechanism reveals that the increase in competition among firms and the imperfect transfer of cost pressures by firms are important channels. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the negative impact of digital economy development on markup is larger for firms with characteristics such as less digitalization, tighter financing constraints, and weaker cost-saving capabilities. The study also finds that digital economy development reduces the dispersion of markup and significantly improves the efficiency of resource allocation. The findings of this paper have important implications for understanding the significance of digital economy and real economy integration, and how to further promote digital economy development effectively.