(Correspondent Shiyi Xiao) April 13, 2022, the third Frontier Forum for Digital Technology and Finance hosted by the Innovation and Talent Base for Digital Technology and Finance was successfully held online. The theme of this forum is "Migration Fear and Minority Crowd-Funding Success: Evidence from Kickstarter". The guest speaker is Professor John Bai from Northeastern University. The meeting was presided over by Dr. Yonghao Xu, the researcher of the Base. Professor Minggui Yu, Co-Director of the Base and Dean of the School of Finance; Associate Professor Sun Xianming, Executive Deputy Director of the Base, and students from colleges and universities across China participated in the forum.

First of all, Professor Bai introduced the issue of immigration based on the diverse demographic of the United States and his personal experiences. Then, he introduced the research motivation and research question, which is, whether the national public opinion about immigration affects the success rate of projects which is initiated by minority sponsors on crowdfunding platforms. Existing research shows that immigration is closely related to ethnic minorities. Professor Bai and his collaborators chose the Kickstarter platform, an American crowdfunding website, as the data source. The platform published the names, photos, and project information of the founders in crowdfunding, providing data support for the empirical research.

As for the potential mechanism, Professor Bai and his collaborators proposed three basic assumptions: (1)The projects initiated among ethnic minorities and whites have some differences in nature (e.g., their choice of project types, etc), which is related to the success rate of crowdfunding; (2) The public opinion implicitly discriminates against minority founders, for which affects the success rate of founders; (3)The fears from local investors of minority founders affect the success rate of their crowdfunding.

Professor Bai and his collaborators rejected hypothesis (1), which contended that selection preferences have an impact on the success rate. This analysis was carried out through the method of group matching, and their findings showed that there were no significant differences in the types and quality of projects among founders of different ethnicities. During periods of high immigration panic, the success rate of African-American and Hispanic project founders would be reduced by 2.1% when the quarterly migration fear index data increased by a standard deviation. The authors also demonstrated the negative impact of the immigration fear for the founders’ local community on the success rate through a sample decomposition test. During the COVID-19 pandemic and Asian hate incidents, there has been a similar shortage of funding success rates for Chinese creators.

Finally, the participants asked questions and discussed with Professor Bai. Professor Xianming Sun expressed his gratitude to Professor Bai for his speech, and the forum was successfully concluded.

Speaker Introduction

Dr. Bai is an associate professor of finance, Gary Gregg Research Fellow, and Joseph Riesman Research Professor at D’Amore-Mckim School of Business at Northeastern University. His research focuses on the interaction between firms, the capital market, and the labor market. His work has been published in top finance and management journals. His recent work focuses on ESG, Fintech, and risk factor disclosure.

Frontier Forum for Digital Technology and Finance

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic acceleration in a digital revolution in economic sectors and a rapid adoption of the new generation of information technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, big data, etc. These technologies effectively set off the digital economy. It has become a key driving force in creating global economic growth, improving the modernization level of governance capabilities, and promoting high-quality economic development in China. In particular, digital finance is the most important part of the digital economy. To explore the development direction of the cross-integration of digital technology and finance, the Innovation and Talent Base for Digital Technology and Finance is hosting the “Frontier Forum for Digital Technology and Finance”, in collaboration with the School of Finance, Wenlan School of Business, Economics School, School of Information and Safety Engineering, School of Statistics and Mathematics, School of Public Finance and Taxation of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL). This lecture series will invite the well-known scholars at home and abroad in digital technology, digital economy, digital finance, and other related fields as guest speakers, providing an open and cutting-edge academic exchange platform for interdisciplinary research on digital technology and finance.