Speaker: Shelley Xiuli Tong, Ph.D. (University of Hongkong)Venue: Conference Room 537, Building 3, Haina Court, Zijingang Campus

Speaker: Prof. JIN Yubo (Durham University)Venue: Room 203, Building 2, Haina Court, Zijingang CampusAbstract: The main problem concerned in this talk is the algebraicity of special L-values for automorphic forms on classical groups (Deligne's conjecture). After reviewing this problem, we will present an integral representation for L-functions by the doubling method. Using the integral representation and the Fourier expansion of Eisenstein series, we can prove the algebraicity result in the `holomorphic' case. We will also explain our future plan on studying this problem in full generality.

Speaker: Prof. SUN Chengzhu (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)Host: Prof. HUANG Ying (Zhejiang University)Venue: A423, School of Management, Zijingang CampusAbstract: This study examines whether improved environmental, social, and governance (ESG) transparency enhances firms’competitiveness for foreign government procurement contracts. Exploiting the staggered adoption of mandatory ESG disclosure requirements across countries, we find that, following the ESG disclosure mandate, firms in the treated countries are more likely to receive foreign governments’ procurement contracts and contracts with higher values than their counterparts in the control countries. This effect is more pronounced for green contracts, suppliers with enhanced ESG disclosure quality after the mandate, and purchasing governments exhibiting a higher degree of ESG consciousness. Moreover, the effect is stronger when suppliers face more intensive competition. Channel tests indicate that the ESG disclosure mandate affects global allocation of government procurements through two channels: increased ESG disclosure and improved ESG performance. Our findings shed light on the role of ESG transparency in contracting with foreign governments.

Speaker: Prof. LI Donghui (Shenzhen University)Host: Prof. XU Weidong (Zhejiang University)Venue: A423, School of Management, Zijingang CampusAbstract: Based on the listed Chinese A-share firms spanning 2007 to 2021, this paper finds that the US governmental sanctions have seriously deteriorated their financing constraints. It is further shown that this adverse impact is more pronounced for those firms with greater risk exposure, while the following firm traits can alleviate financing constraints caused by sanctions: high market position, strong innovation and research capabilities, and effective government support policies. Moreover, the impact of the US governmental sanctions on the Chinese firms is shown to be mainly due to reduced corporate performance, raised financing costs, worsened corporate risks, and reduced market expectations. Various robustness and endogeneity tests confirm our main conclusions.

Speaker: Prof. ZHOU Chao (National University of Singapore)Venue: Room 102, Building 2, Haina Court, Zijingang CampusAbstract: This paper deals with the optimization problem of a class of controlled N-particle systems. We establish the regularity results, which is uniform in N, on the HJB equations corresponding to the N-particle system. The uniform regularity results are obtained by the stochastic maximum principle and the analysis on a Riccati type BSDE. Using the uniform regularity results, we show the convergence of value function and optimal control as the number N of particles tends to infinity, where the convergence rates are also given. This is based on a joint work with Huafu Liao, Alpar Meszaros and Chenchen Mou.Contact person: Prof. ZHANG Rongmao (rmzhang@zju.edu.cn）

Speaker: Prof. RONG Ying (Professor of Management Science at Shanghai Jiao Tong University)Venue: Room 357/359, ZIBS Building, Haining CampusLanguage: ChineseAbstract: This talk explores customer returns in an online environment, comprising two distinct parts. The first part investigates the influence of live social interactions in livestream e-commerce. Live interactions, allowing real-time communication between streamers and customers, are believed to have a persuasive impact on product returns. Using data from a leading livestream e-commerce company, the study compares product returns in live sessions (featuring live social interactions) to rerun sessions (without such interactions). Econometric models estimate the impact of live social interaction intensity on returns. The results reveal that live sessions have higher return rates than rerun sessions, with the effect strengthening as interaction intensity increases. This confirms the persuasive role of live interactions in livestream e-commerce. The study also finds that the effect is more pronounced when streamers are experienced, assortment sizes are smaller, and product prices are lower. Increasing interaction intensity by one standard deviation can boost return rates by up to 8.59%, significant relative to average rates, with implications discussed.

Speaker: Prof. ZHU AiyongVenue: A423, School of Management, Zijingang CampusAbstract: This study provides novel evidence on the magnitude of switching costs in auditing. We use a discrete choice approach to infer switching costs from clients’auditor choices. The demand estimation reveals that switching costs matter and that they differ by the direction with switching from non-Big 4 to Big 4 auditors being associated with the greatest switching costs. Counterfactual analyses of forced auditor switches indicate that switching costs are substantial, ranging from 0.7 billion US dollars (14.2% of audit fees) to 1.2 billion US dollars (24.0% of audit fees) when aggregated across all clients. Counterfactual analyses of voluntary auditor switches show that the audit market would become highly dynamic and more concentrated if switching costs were removed. Furthermore, clients would gain consumer surplus of up to 306 million US dollars (5.4% of audit fees) in this scenario. Overall, our study documents the important role of switching costs to understand audit market dynamics. The link of the paper is: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4166004.

Speaker: Prof. JING NaihuanVenue: Room 101, Building 2, Haina Court, Zijingang Campus

Speaker: Prof. ZHANG Chuanjing (University of Science and Technology of China)Venue: Room 202, Building 2, Haina Court, Zijingang CampusAbstract: In this talk, we consider the limiting property of the Hermitian-Yang-Mills flow and introduce our recent works in the non-Kähler case. Then we give some applications. These works are joint with Zeng Chen, Chao Li and Professor Xi Zhang.Contact person: Prof. JIANG Wenshuai (wsjiang@zju.edu.cn)