The Nineteenth and Twentieth Sessions of Academic Forum of Excellence 2023 of the Business School for the 20th Anniversary Celebration of the Establishment of the Business School and the MBA Education Center Successfully Organized

The Business School, Central University of Finance and Economics hosted the Nineteenth and Twentieth Sessions of Academic Forum of Excellence 2023 of the Business School for the 20th Anniversary Celebration of the Establishment of the Business School and the MBA Education Center in Room 615 of the Main Teaching Building at the Xueyuan South Road Campus on September 25 and 27, 2023. The lectures featured Professor Li Zhaolin from the University of Sydney Business School as the guest speaker. More than twenty people, including faculty, doctoral students, master students, and undergraduates, participated in this event.

The conference was hosted by Associate Professor Qian Cheng from the Department of Supply Chain and Operations Management at the Business School. Professor Li Zhaolin, who earned his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University, is currently a professor at the University of Sydney Business School. His primary research interests include supply chain management, operations management, and cross-disciplinary issues. His publications have appeared in top international management journals such as Management Science, Production & Operations Management, Decision Sciences, and European Journal of Operations Research. In 2017, he was recognized as one of Asia's Top Scholars in Operations Management.

On the morning of September 25, Professor Li's lecture was titled Joint Inventory and Financing Decisions under Limited Information. To address the financing challenges faced by small and micro enterprises under bilateral limited information, the study suggests a robust optimization model that considers both inventory and financing decisions. Contrary to the findings of existing literature, the study discovered that equity financing is superior to debt financing in a wide range of parameter intervals. Moreover, when the effort cost for small and micro enterprises is low, equity contracts can achieve centralized decision-making. This research offers significant managerial implications for balancing economic growth and investor protection. In addition, Professor Li introduced three applications of semi-parametric bounds, inventory management, and option pricing.

On the morning of September 27, his lecture was titled Optimal Basic Inventory Strategies under Limited Information: A Zero-sum Game Approach. This research aims to find the optimal basic inventory strategies for a multi-period dynamic inventory system with constant delivery times and independently and identically distributed demands. Unlike previous related studies, this study assumes that enterprises have limited information about demand distribution, knowing only the mean and variance of the demand. Using a zero-sum game approach, the study, derives the analytical solutions for the robust optimal basic inventory levels in two scenarios: sales loss and delayed delivery.

Following the presentation, teachers and students engaged in a lively discussion on Dr. Li's lecture topic, including model construction, model derivation, and responses to reviewer comments, thereby enhancing academic communication.

The “Academic Forum of Excellence” is an academic exchange platform established by the Business School to fulfill its mission of "contributing new knowledge to management.” It focuses on cutting-edge theoretical issues and organizational development challenges in the discipline of business administration and Chinese enterprise management practices. By aggregating cutting-edge thoughts and innovative viewpoints from both domestic and international sources, it seeks to explore Chinese solutions for the social and economic development of China.