On June 14, 2024, at 9:30 am, the 31st Forum on Digital Technology and Economic Finance Frontiers was successfully held. The theme of this lecture was "Research Platform for Open Digital Economy Assisting Academic Research in Digital Economy." The keynote speaker was Director Fang Wang, Director of Data and Model Research at Ant Group Research Institute. The lecture was chaired by Minggui Yu, dean of the Finance School and co-director of the Innovation and Talent Base for Digital Technology and Finance. More than 30 teachers and students from the School of Finance participated in this lecture.

At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Minggui Yu briefly introduced relevant information of Director Fang Wang to the participants and expressed his sincere gratitude for his availability to give a lecture at our college despite his busy schedule.

The content of this lecture primarily encompassed the Ant Group's Digital Economy Open Research Platform, its purpose for establishment, the platform's achievements, data, and methods for data utilization. Firstly, Director Fang Wang pointed out that the digital economy industry and academia are currently facing numerous pressing issues, such as the urgent need for a regulatory system to support and guide new business models, the demand for new theories to back up new regulatory frameworks, the reliance of new theory construction on academic research, the lack of data and industry-leading cases in academic research, the long research cycles and data security risks associated with expert fieldwork, and the high human resource costs and slow personnel growth in joint research. To address these issues, Ant Research Institute has collaborated with universities to launch a digital economy open research program and establish the Digital Economy Open Research Platform to support the research of digital economy theories through an open and innovative research model.

During the lecture, Director Fang Wang demonstrated the platform's official website and public account to the faculty and students and briefly introduced its functions. She noted that the Digital Economy Open Research Platform is essentially a "usable but invisible" research environment. Subsequently, Director Fang Wang introduced the platform's significant achievements since its establishment through detailed data: currently, the platform has registered users covering 344 research institutions, 1,361 registered scholars, and 301 open research projects. The research papers produced have been published in numerous top domestic and international journals. To give the faculty and students a more intuitive understanding of the platform's output, Director Wang Fang elaborated on the papers related to topics such as macro-prudential systemic relevance and monetary policy transmission, financial health, digital consumption and consumption, consumer credit and consumption, the social value impact of AI, micro-enterprise management research, and investment and financial management research. Then, Director Fang Wang focused on introducing the platform's data information that the faculty and students were particularly interested in. The platform organizes data based on business needs, and the data can be divided into three major dimensions: C-end demand dimension, B-end supply dimension, and G-end regional dimension. Among them, the C-end demand dimension involves user basic information, consumption payments, investment and wealth management, content investment advisory, charitable donations, coupon marketing, Sesame Credit, consumer credit, and green public welfare. The B-end supply dimension covers merchant basics, micro-enterprise operations, and micro-enterprise loans. The G-end regional dimension involves micro-enterprise surveys and index data.

Afterwards, Director Fang Wang introduced to the faculty and students how to use the Digital Economy Open Research Platform in the research process: Before research, one needs to register an account and apply for project approval; during research, the platform can provide data exploration and modeling analysis to achieve interim results; after research, the platform will assist in outputting the results and provide review support.

Finally, Director Fang Wang provided detailed answers to the enthusiastic questions raised by the faculty and students regarding the platform's data sources and usage. The lecture concluded successfully.

Speaker Introduction

Wang Fang, a Ph.D. in Statistics from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and a postdoctoral researcher at the Shanghai Stock Exchange, currently serves as the Director of Data and Model Research at the Ant Group Research Institute, mainly responsible for the work of the Open Research Platform for Digital Economy, supporting scholars in theoretical innovation and empirical research related to digital economy. She has published papers in well-known domestic and international journals such as "Statistical Research", "China Economic Quarterly", "Economic Management", China Economic Review, and China Economic Journal.

Frontier Forum for Digital Technology and Finance introduction

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.