Seminar – Fintech Credit, Financial Inclusion and Entrepreneurial Growth

Professor Yi Huang, The Graduate Institute, Geneva

Based on automated credit lines to more than a million firms trading on Alibaba’s e-commerce platform, we show that fintech credit mitigates local credit supply frictions in China’s segmented credit market and extends the “frontier” of credit availability to firms with a low credit score. We use a discontinuity in the credit decision algorithm to document that a firm’s credit approval and find first-time online credit use boosts firm growth in terms of sales and transaction growth. These findings reveal the scope of China’s credit market frictions and the benefits of new credit technologies in improving credit markets.

Speaker bio

Professor Huang is an Associate Professor of International Economics and Pictet Chair in Finance and Development at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. He is a Research Affiliate at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and serves at the Council on Global Economic Imbalances at the World Economic Forum. Professor Huang was an economist in the research department of the IMF and a Research Associate of the Globalisation and Monetary Policy Institution in the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. He has been a visiting PhD student at the UC Berkley and a Research Fellow at the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research as well as the visiting Assistant Professor at London Business School. Professor Huang’s research consists of international economics, finance, financial economics and emerging market economies, especially the influence of corporation’s financing and investment to financial market and labour market. Recent work focuses on credit markets, household finance, fintech, and entrepreneurship. Professor Huang gained his masters degree from the China Centre for Economics Research, Peking University, and his PhD in international macroeconomic and finance from the London Business School.