【论坛时间】2021年12月9日（周四）14:00（下午）

【论坛地点】经济乐动(中国)210会议室 腾讯会议：477-740-410

【主题一】Effect of Agglomeration on Firms’ Research and Development Investment: A U-shaped Relationship

【内容提要】Extant research on how agglomeration impacts firms’ R&D investment reveals conflicting views. Some studies suggest that, due to free riding arising from knowledge spillovers, agglomeration reduces firms’ R&D investment, whereas others find that it creates additional incentives for innovation through the intensification of local competition, thereby increasing firms’ R&D investment. This study attempts to reconcile these two conflicting views. We propose a U-shaped relationship between agglomeration and firms’ R&D investment. When the extent of agglomeration is low, knowledge spillover effects are important, while local competition is negligible. The free riding effects dominate local competition effects. Thereby firms’ R&D investment decreases with the extent of agglomeration at a decreasing rate. By contrast, when the extent of agglomeration is high, local competition becomes the dominant force. Consequently, firms’ R&D investment increases with the extent of agglomeration at an increasing rate. By using data from 299,256 manufacturing firms in China, we found that firms’ R&D investment first decreases with the extent of agglomeration to reach a minimum, after which it increases as the extent of agglomeration continues to rise. These results indicate that there is a robust U-shaped relationship between agglomeration and firms’ R&D investment.

【主讲人简介】李玉花，副教授，博士生导师，主要从事FDI、技术创新以及冲突与贸易等方面的研究。主持国家自然科学基金项目2项，在Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization、管理世界、中国工业经济、Review of Development Economics等国内外重要期刊上发表学术论文10余篇。

【主题二】How Important Are the International Financial Market Imperfections for the Foreign Exchange Rate Dynamics: A Study of the Sterling Exchange Rate

【内容提要】The UK has been a net debtor over the past two decades and the sterling exchange rates are sensitive to any chaos that might occur in the financial market. This paper examines the importance of the international financial imperfections in the sterling exchange rate dynamics. We build a small open economy DSGE model with the constrained international financial institutions that intermediate capital flows, and derive tractable analytical solutions. The constraint works to introduce a wedge between lending and borrowing rates, which compensates financiers for their currency risk-taking. The model has been estimated by using a simulation-based Indirect Inference approach, which provides a natural frame work for testing the hypothesis implied by the model. We find that the model cannot be rejected by the UK data. Shocks to financial forces are the main driving forces behind the large and sudden depreciation of the Sterling exchange rates in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the Brexit vote. Furthermore, the optimal policy rules have been proposed.

【主讲人简介】董雪，乐动讲师，博士毕业于英国卡迪夫大学（Cardiff University）,研究方向宏观经济、国际宏观金融。近年来以第一作者或通讯作者在Journal of International Money and Finance 学术期刊发表论文。