Tuesday, November 16, 2021 | 11:00am-12:15pm Pacific Time
A Confluence of Tech and Talent: Rural Online Entrepreneurship and Return Migration with Professors Chuck Eesley, Stanford University and Wesley Koo, INSEAD
Prior research indicates that the Internet can elevate the rural economy by connecting rural entrepreneurs to the wider market. In this study, we show that return migration is a crucial factor for the performance of e-commerce in rural areas. Using data from a leading ecommerce platform, we set up a natural experiment involving a provincial-level policy change that reduced the barriers for talented rural migrants to return and work in their home villages. In a difference-in-differences design, we find that after the policy change, rural e-commerce businesses in the province that implemented the policy change enjoyed a 22 percent performance gain relative to other rural businesses.
About the Speakers
Chuck Eesley is an Associate Professor and W.M. Keck Foundation Faculty Scholar in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. As part of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, his research focuses on the role of the institutional and university environment in high-growth, technology entrepreneurship. His research focuses on rethinking how the educational and policy environment shapes the economic and entrepreneurial impact of university alumni. His field research spans China, Japan, Chile, Bangladesh, Thailand and Silicon Valley and has received awards from the Schulze Foundation, the Technical University of Munich, and the Kauffman Foundation. He is a faculty affiliate at the Stanford Center for International Development, the Woods Institute for the Environment and the Stanford King Center on Global Development. He is also a member of the Editorial Board for the Strategic Management Journal.
Wesley W. Koo is an Assistant Professor of Strategy at INSEAD. In his research, Wesley studies how digitization and platforms affect business and society. He is particularly interested in the "offline interface" - how an organization's offline environment shapes its online behavior and performance. For instance, he looks at how rural entrepreneurs' local information environment affects their ability to navigate algorithmic changes on digital platforms. During his Ph.D. at Stanford, Wesley's research was supported by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Stanford SEED, Accel Partners, Strategic Management Society, and Alibaba Group. Prior to Ph.D., he was a tech entrepreneur and received degrees in Environmental Engineering and Finance from MIT. He was among the Poets & Quants 40 under 40 Best Business School Professors in 2021.
Seminar Series Moderators:
Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and Co-Director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University. For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). In recent years Rozelle spends most of his time co-directing the Rural Education Action Project (REAP). In recognition of his outstanding achievements, Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards, including the Friendship Award in 2008, the highest award given to a non-Chinese by the Premier; and the National Science and Technology Collaboration Award in 2009 for scientific achievement in collaborative research.
Hongbin Li is the James Liang Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Hongbin obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 and joined the economics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he became full professor in 2007. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing 2007-2016 and was C.V. Starr Chair Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Management. He also founded and served as the Executive Associate Director of the China Social and Economic Data Center at Tsinghua University. He founded the Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) in 2009 and the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) in 2014.
Hongbin’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world . He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics.
Register once to receive the Zoom meeting link that will be used for all lectures in this series.
