SCCEI Seminar Series (Winter 2025)

Friday, January 17, 2025 | 12:00 pm -1:20 pm Pacific Time
Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall, 616 Jane Stanford Way

Firm-to-Firm Referrals 

The research makes randomized firm-to-firm referrals between 700 supplier and client firms in the industry producing the Chinese writing brush. Subsidized referrals lead to subsequent transactions and a partial crowding out of prior partners; information-only referrals have no effect. The referrals increase revenue, profit, and hours worked in supplier firms and growth-oriented client firms. Treated suppliers increase product quality, while treated clients expand product variety into higher-quality products, suggesting that the referrals enable complementary upgrading. Treated firms increase beliefs about the value of partners, search for partners, and the number of non-referred partners, suggesting that pessimistic beliefs is a key partnering friction. The referrals generate very large private and social returns. 

Please register for the event to receive email updates and add it to your calendar. Lunch will be provided.

About the Speaker 
 

Jing Cai is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland. She received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 2012. Her research areas are development economics and household finance. Her current research examines the growth of micro-enterprises and SMEs, impacts of tax incentives on firm behavior, and diffusion and impacts of financial innovations in developing countries. Dr. Cai is a Co-Chair of the firm sector of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a fellow of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD). She currently serves as an associate editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, and the Economic Development and Cultural Change.

A NOTE ON LOCATION

Please join us in-person in the Goldman Conference Room located within Encina Hall on the 4th floor of the East wing.

Questions? Contact Xinmin Zhao at xinminzhao@stanford.edu