Abstract: IESR establishes The Research Center for International Trade and Firms(CITF), directed by Daniel Yi Xu, Professor of economics at Duke University.

IESR has recently established its second research center: The research Center for International Trade and Firms(CITF), directed by Professor Daniel Yi Xu from economic department at Duke University. This is the second research center of IESR besides the Center for Econometrics and Microdata Practice CITF centers on high quality academic researches on the firm development in emerging economies.

In 2017, CITF has succeeded in holding the first Firms in Emerging Economies Workshop, The Workshop brings together the world-class top scholars to put international trade, industrial organization and related fields at the forefront of research and policy. What's more, CITF has made great efforts in the collection and analysis of Chinese data, in particular firm-level micro data. In 2017， IESR has carried out the Guangdong Manufacturing Enterprise Survey which samples about 600 manufacturing enterprises across 15 cities in Guangdong. The survey data is one of the important resources for the analysis and understanding of multiple economic issues in Guangdong, such as financial management, quality control, human capital, production, industrial robots, information and digital business etc.

In the future, CITF will conduct a series of innovations in three areas: academic research, data integration and policy research. More channels of international cooperation and communications are to be developed to promote our own studies as well to stay current with the forefront of economics research. CITF also strives to build a database by fully utilizing the high quality micro data collected by the Survey Data Center at IESR as well as integrating the commonly used micro data of Chinese companies. About the policy research, CITF will make full use of the location advantages of IESR to strengthen the policy research on industrial upgrading and high quality Economic development of Guangdong province and the neighbor area.

Our goal is to develop CITF into one of the top academic centers in the fields of international trade and business development in China in three to five years.

If you need more information about us, please visit: citf-iesr.jnu.edu.cn