The 38th Frontier Forum for Digital Technology and Finance

Abstract：

How to fully leverage FinTech to empower the real economy and promote high-quality economic transformation and sustainable development has become a globally debated topic. As society enters a fully digital era, emerging technologies like ChatGPT are profoundly reshaping lifestyles and decision-making processes, presenting both opportunities and challenges for FinTech development. This lecture reviews cutting-edge research in three areas: alternative data, machine learning/artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain/digital currencies.First, we explore information extraction from alternative data across text, images, videos, and audio. Second, we analyze applications of machine learning and AI in finance, including their economic impacts. Third, we discuss blockchain technology and the economic implications of digital currencies. Finally, we outline key future research directions: activating the value of alternative data through multimodal technologies and large language models (LLMs), deepening machine learning applications in corporate finance and asset pricing, investigating AI’s economic effects, exploring blockchain/digital currency prospects, and advancing interdisciplinary studies. This lecture provides methodological guidance for applying emerging technologies to FinTech research, enhances understanding of FinTech’s mechanisms and risks, and offers strategic insights for strengthening financial innovation.

Speaker Introduction：

Jiaquan Yao is a Professor of Finance at Jinan University, specializing in FinTech, digital economy, and AI economics. He holds a Bachelor’s in Information Engineering and a Master’s in Theoretical Econometrics from Xi’an Jiaotong University, and a Ph.D. in Finance from Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). His research has been published in leading journals such as Review of Financial Studies, Management Science, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Management World, and Journal of Management Science in China, as well as top computer science conferences (WWW, KDD). He serves as Associate Editor for International Journal of Finance and Economics (ABS 3-star) and authored the textbook Python for Economic Big Data Analysis (Higher Education Press).