题目：Old is Gold: Demand Booms and the Diffusion of Capital Vintages

主讲人：冯翔宇

时间：2026年10月30日 上午10:00 – 11:30

地点：北京大学国家发展研究院(承泽园)217

摘要： This paper studies how permanent demand shocks shape the diffusion of capital vintages within a technology category. Empirically, I document that in developing economies more exposed to a positive export demand shock, production expands in old vintages while new vintages show no differential response. The divergence therefore shifts the composition of capital towards older vintages, and it persists for over a decade. This is difficult to reconcile with standard theories: under a payoff separable in demand and vintage age, exogenous or disruption-based adoption costs admit only the size effect, which can at most accelerate adoption. I then show that a general framework with lagged profit realization, asymmetric demand shocks, and heterogeneous firms rationalizes the fact. Lagged profit realization, modelled non-parametrically as a hump-shaped payoff, creates endogenous adoption costs. Asymmetric shocks that favor the relatively impatient high-exposure firms raise those costs relative to the benefits, so they optimally postpone upgrading. The framework is widely applicable: its payoff hump is purely qualitative, its asymmetry is intrinsic to trade-induced demand shocks, and its patience ordering is informed by data rather than imposed. A calibrated version, microfounding the payoff hump by learning by doing, reproduces the pattern: a 50 percent permanent increase in relative demand delays exporters' upgrading threshold by 1.55 years and raises the output-share-weighted average vintage age by 0.27 years.

bio info:

冯翔宇，经济学博士，现任厦门大学邹至庄经济研究院副教授，博士生导师，《中国经济问题》编委。他的研究基于丰富的微观数据，结合严谨的实证工具和结构模型，重点关注宏观环境对异质性经济个体的影响，形成了一系列具有一定影响力的研究成果。近年来冯翔宇在 Journal of Public Economics，Economic Journal, American Economics Journal: Macroeconomics 等多部国际知名期刊发表论文多篇。此外，冯翔宇还主持或参与多项国家级科研项目。

Xiangyu Feng is an Associate Professor at the Paula and Gregory Chow Institute for Studies in Economics, Xiamen University. Leveraging granular microdata and rigorous structural models, his research explores how the collective behaviors of microeconomic agents interact with and transform macroeconomic dynamics, with a primary focus on long-run economic growth and public finance. He earned his PhD in Economics from Boston University in 2020. His research findings have appeared in leading international economics journals, including The Economic Journal, Journal of Public Economics, and American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. He also leads or participates in multiple national-level research projects.