Liu Xiliang,co-author of the book, One Century of History of Chinese Financial Thoughts & Theories, made a speech at the ceremony held for granting the Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Awards in Beijing on July 3, 2016. (Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn)
In addition, one book and two Chinese papers also won the award.
The book, One Century of History of Chinese Financial Thoughts & Theories, is a compilation of the stories of more than 90 Chinese who have contributed to China's financial studies in the past 100 years, starting with Sun Yat-sen.
Co-author Liu Xiliang said the book originated from their recognition that when reviewing economic literature review, students could only cite Western thoughts, as published Chinese thoughts on the subject had been rare.
"The book took us eight years but even after the publication and winning this award, we are still worried, as it was really hard to be objective in deciding who was be selected and in judging on their contributions," Liu said in his speech.
He said their work might only be a first step to the study of China's financial theoretical history as it has provided something to be examined and criticized.
Gan Li, co-author of the award-winning paper in Chinese, Financial availability, financial market participation and household portfolio choice, said China's problems have yet to become mainstream research questions in international academia.
He explained that only 20 papers on China's economy, 1.8 percent of the total papers, were published in the top five economics journals and top three finance journals between January 2015 and June 2016.
Of the 20 papers, only three were about China's special problems, while the other 17 tested Western theories.
He added that there are four papers in the top five economics journals that study migration, as in Indonesia, India, Mexico and Africa. But there is no such research in these journals on China's migration phenomenon, which should be of more academic value.
He said one of the reasons is lack of a reliable database. His team has been building a household finance database based on surveys done in 2011, 2013 and 2015 on 40,000 Chinese households in 1,400 communities in 363 counties or cities and that this database is open to all scholars.
Zhou Hao said the paper Gan co-authored won a Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Award as this database is the first of its kind in China.
Li Jiange, chairman of the Sun Yefang Economic Science Foundation said his agency decided in 2013, when the Sun Yefang Economics Prize, which was considered China's Nobel Prize in the economics sector, had been in place for thirty years, to set up a new award to encourage financial scholars to do more bold explorations. Authors of an award-winning paper can receive 100,000 yuan ($14,995.65), which is shared. The authors of a book can share a 20,000 yuan prize.
The foundation set up another judging committee for financial awards, chaired by Wu Xiaoling, former vice governor of People's Bank of China, the central bank. Funding of the financial awards comes from the China Financial Futures Exchange only.
The awards are given out every two years and submissions for this year's awards included 51 books in Chinese, 69 papers in Chinese and 24 papers in English, according to the judging committee set up at Tsinghua University PBC Finance School.
