Zhentong Lu - Latest
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Quantifying the Economic Benefits of Payments Modernization: the Case of the Large-Value Payment System
Canada is undertaking a major initiative to modernize its payments ecosystem. The modernized ecosystem is expected to bring significant benefits to Canadian financial markets and the overall economy. We develop an empirical framework to quantify the economic benefits of modernizing the payment system in Canada. -
Measuring the Effectiveness of Salespeople: Evidence from a Cold-Drink Market
Salespeople are widely employed in many industries. We leverage a unique data set on retail sales from a leading Chinese cold-drink manufacturer and information on the firm’s salespeople assignment rule to measure the causal effect of salespeople on product revenue. -
The Effects of Government Licensing on E-commerce: Evidence from Alibaba
How does government licensing affect selling on online platforms? We examine the impact of China’s 2015 Food Safety Law on sellers and buyers on Alibaba, the largest e-commerce platform in that country. -
Examining the Impact of Home Purchase Restrictions on China’s Housing Market
How do “cooling measures” in the housing market—policies aimed to stabilize prices—affect the market? We use a structural model of housing demand and price competition among developers to evaluate China’s home purchase restriction policies implemented in 2010–11. -
Predicting Payment Migration in Canada
Developments are underway to replace Canada’s two core payment systems with three new systems. We use a discrete choice model to predict migration patterns of end-users and financial institutions for future systems and discuss their policy implications. -
An Economic Perspective on Payments Migration
Consumers, businesses and banks make millions of payments each day using a variety of instruments, such as debit cards, cheques and wires. Canada is currently developing three new systems to process these transactions: Lynx, Settlement Optimization Engine (SOE) and Real-Time Rail (RTR).