“国商论坛”第54期将于12月22日13:55-15:30举行

报告题目：Was the World’s Trouble China’s Opportunity? The Effects of WWI Trade Shock on the Chinese Textile Industry

报告人：上海财经大学 经济学院 助理教授 刘丛

主持人：西南财经大学 国际商学院  周茂 讲师

报告地点：西南财经大学柳林校区通博楼 TB109

内容简介：

This paper studies the impact of trade disturbances caused by World War I on the Chinese textile industry. Trade records show that the import prices of cotton products doubled while the total import value of these products decreased by approximately 20% during the war. The experience of representative firms suggests that textile firms earned additional profits. I combine newly collected information on textile firms, financial institutions, and trade from multiple sources to construct a county-level panel dataset from 1905 to 1925 and quantitatively examine the impact of this trade shock on firm entry and investments. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that access to financial institutions was essential for firm investments during this positive trade shock. For counties with the same access to trade, a 10% increase in county-level bank reserve in 1912 was associated with a 0.2% increase in the entry of new firms during the war and a 0.5% increase in the entry of new firms after the war. I then use firm-level information to examine the intensive margins and find similar effects on firm investments. This paper provides new quantitative evidence for industrial growth in China during the 1910s. In addition, the findings suggest that during a favorable market environment, access to financial institutions is important for firm entry and capital formation.

欢迎本院及其他相关单位有兴趣的教师、研究人员和研究生参加。

西南财经大学国际商学院

2017年12月19日