Date & Time：April 10, 2019 10:30 - 12:00a.m.
Venue：SEM 104 Auditorium Room
Speaker：Sumit Agarwal（Prof. from National University of Singapore）
Inviter：Long Wang
Abstract：
The proliferation of digital technologies over the past two decades has been substantial, marking one of history’s most rapid rates of adoption of new technologies. Digitization offers incremental economic growth: countries at the most advanced stage of digitization derive 20 percent more in economic benefits than those at the initial stage. Digitization has a proven impact on reducing unemployment, improving quality of life, and boosting citizens’ access to public services. In addition, the society has witnessed a fast diffusion of digitization in consumer payment instruments, through improved debit/credit card networks, e-wallets, mobile payments and the striking new phenomenon of digital currencies. Finally, digitization allows governments to operate with greater transparency and efficiency.
Professor Agarwal has conducted a series of quantitative analyses on the value of digitization to the economy by looking at the demonetization in India, the introduction of the QR Code in Singapore, and the auto underwriting in China. He will share his thoughts on the social and economic impacts of digitization, and its potential benefits in developing technology applications with a fundamental positive contribution to our quality of life.
Speaker Biography:
Sumit Agarwal is the Low Tuck Kwong Professor at the School of Business and Professor in the departments of Economics, Finance and Real Estate at the National University of Singapore. Previously, he held positions as a Professor of Finance at Georgetown University, senior financial economist in the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and a senior vice president and credit risk management executive in the Small Business Risk Solutions Group of Bank of America.
Professor Agarwal's research interests include issues relating to financial institutions, household finance, behavioral finance, international finance, real estate markets, urban economics and capital markets. He has published over eighty research articles in journals like the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Management Science, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking among others. Additionally, he has co-written a book titled Kiasunomics and co-edited a collected volume on Household Credit Usage: Personal Debt and Mortgages.
He is the co-editor of Real Estate Economics and an association editor at Management Science and Journal of Financial Services Research. He writes regular op-ed’s in the Straits Times and Forbes and is featured on various media outlets like the BBC, CNBC, and Fox on issues relating to finance, banking, and real estate markets. Sumit’s research is widely cited in leading newspapers and magazines like the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, and the U.S Presidents Report to Congress. He also runs a blog on household financial decision making called Smart Finance.
