The 303th Wenlan Financial Forum

Abstract：

With the rise and development of the platform economy, it has become an important yet challenging issue to reasonably price the stocks of platform enterprises. A large number of platform enterprises are recognized by the capital market due to their promising market prospects, but their operations are in a state of long-term losses, making it difficult to assess their value using traditional financial data and asset pricing theories. This article, based on the network effect characteristics of the platform economy, adopts a combination of theoretical modeling and empirical analysis to study the role of user scale growth in the stock pricing of platform enterprises.

Speaker Introduction：

Weiyi Zhao is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Economics, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, and a member of the Digital Economy and Financial Technology Lab at Cornell University. His main research interests lie in empirical asset pricing, digital economy, and financial technology. His research has been presented at over ten high-quality international and domestic conferences, such as ABFER, EFMA, SIF, and CIFFP. He has won numerous awards, including the First Prize for Outstanding Papers at the 7th National Doctoral Forum on Finance (2023), the Best Paper Award at the European Finance Management Association Annual Conference (2022), and the Best Paper Award at the Tel Aviv University Blockchain Research Institute Conference (2021). He has also published papers in CSSCI core journals. Zhao has participated in several National Natural Science Foundation of China's general programs and major projects.