第一讲 Why Small Firms Fail to Adopt Profitable Opportunities

时间：2月21日10:00-11:30

Time: Tuesday, February 21, 10:00 - 11: 30, a.m. Beijing Time

           Monday, February 20, 8:00 - 9: 30, p.m. U.S. Central Time

地点/Venue：ZOOM(发送邮件至yjiang@nsd.pku.edn.cn 获取线上会议信息)

主讲人/Speaker：Sean Higgins

主持人/Host：胡佳胤 Jiayin Hu

摘要/Abstract:

Why do small firms often fail to adopt new profitable opportunities, even in the absence of informational frictions, fixed costs, or misaligned incentives? We explore three potential mechanisms: present bias, memory, and trust in other firms. In partnership with a financial technology (FinTech) company in Mexico, we randomly offer firms that are already users of the payment technology the opportunity to be charged a lower merchant fee for each payment they receive from customers. The median value of the fee reduction is 3% of profits. We randomly vary the size of the fee reduction, whether the firms face a deadline to accept the offer, whether they receive a reminder, and whether we tell them in advance that they will receive a reminder. While deadlines do not affect take-up, reminders increase take-up of the lower fee by 18%, and anticipated reminders by an additional 7%. The results point to limited memory in firms, but not present bias. Additional survey data suggests trust as the mechanism behind the significant additional effect of the anticipated reminder. Upon receiving an anticipated reminder from the FinTech company, firms value the offer more and accept it even if they generally distrust advertised offers.

主讲人介绍/Biography:

Sean Higgins is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. His research studies how technology reduces barriers to financial inclusion, and the effect of reducing these barriers on households and small firms. He holds a PhD in Economics, and prior to joining Kellogg, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.