香港一向高度依賴來自物業市場交易的地價收入和印花稅，作為政府主要財政來源，但兩種稅收均與經濟周期掛鈎，波動性高，長遠難成穩定收入來源。面對2019冠狀病毒病威脅下的嚴峻經濟環境，筆者認為當局應另闢蹊徑，透過破格思維力求財政穩健均衡。

說特朗普任內以社交媒體治國並不為過，他在推特和臉書就分別有8800萬和300萬的追隨者。1月6日發生示威者衝擊國會山莊事件之後，特朗普被社交媒體封鎖，推特甚至永久封閉其私人賬戶。這些事件都來得非常突然，特朗普作為一個現象，和他任內的作為，特別是在任期的最後幾個月，都是值得歷史學家和政治學家細加研究的課題。

民主制度無法選出最優秀的人，起碼能夠趕走不合格的人──抱着「特朗普以外任何人」（Anyone but Trump）的美國人，用選票體現了這句經典對白。然而，儘管兩黨鬥得難分難解，美國朝野內外還是達到一大共識──就是「沒有人再敢提中美友好，否則是自殺行為！」港大經濟及工商管理學院經濟學教授鄧希煒向本刊表示。

The COVID-19 pandemic has subdued our physical economy, but mankind’s innovative spirit is indominable. On November 14, 2020, Professor Hongbin Cai, Dean of HKU Business School, and his PhD advisor cum 2020 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, Professor Paul Robert Milgrom from Stanford University were invited for discussion at the 11th Caixin Summit “Rebuilding Global Trust” on the development of auction theory and the study of market design. Professor Milgrom spiced up the conference by sharing his Nobel Prize worth of masterpiece---a customised auction model that brings Genesis to the United States (US) broadcast landscape.

HKU Business School Associate Professor Dr. Jayson Jia and his team have developed a model to accurately predict COVID-19’s spread and assess risk using only mobile phone data, and to explore people’s response to the pandemic.

Article by Associate Professor Dr Stephen Ching and Research Assistant Mr Peter Mu in Ming Pao Daily.

Professor Heiwai Tang, Professor of Economics, was interviewed by HK01 about HK’s ranking as a free economy.

香港經濟面臨嚴峻困境，令人憂慮貧窮問題勢將變本加厲。 2018年，全港貧窮人口為140.6萬，在恆常現金政策介入後，則降至102.4萬，其中90,100人為18–29歲青年，佔整體貧窮人口8.8%，比率更在過去3年持續上升【註】。政府為此於2016年設立青年發展基金及青少年空間共享計劃，2017及2018年施政報告亦提出加強對年青人追求創新和創業的支援，並鼓勵年青人開拓境外（如大灣區）的發展機會。

The article 《博弈論 七十年》 was originally published in Hong Kong Economic Journal column 「龍虎山下」

Prof. Hongbin Cai, Dean of HKU Business School was interviewed by Master Insight on how dominant of Hong Kong tertiary Institutions among the global critical situation.

The majority of fledgling businesses fly straight into the unforgiving rule of natural selection – only the fittest and strongest survive. In terms of start-ups, the rule is even more merciless. What can start-ups do to succeed in this brutal environment? Professor David Tse, Stelux Professor of Marketing and Director of the Contemporary Marketing Centre at the HKU Business School, believes Breakthrough Innovation (BI) is an effective strategy for success. Simply put, BI fosters strategies that help service new and under-served markets.

Estimating the hazard function of customer patience time has become a necessary component of effective operational planning such as workforce staffing and scheduling in call centers. When customers get served, their patience times are right-censored. In addition, the exact event times in call centers are sometimes unobserved and naturally binned into time intervals, due to the design of data collection systems. We develop a TunT (Transform-unTransform) estimator that turns the difficult problem of nonparametric hazard function estimation into a regression problem on binned and right-censored data. Our approach starts with binning event times and transforming event count data with a mean-matching transformation, which enables a simpler characterization of the heteroscedastic variance function. A nonparametric regression technique is then applied to the transformed data. Finally, the estimated regression function is back-transformed to yield an estimator for the original hazard function. The proposed estimation procedure is illustrated using call center data to reveal interesting customer patience behavior, and health insurance plan trial data to compare the effect between treatment and control groups. The numerical study shows that our approach yields more accurate estimates and better staffing decisions than existing methods.

近日最矚目的國際新聞，莫過於特朗普總統頒布行政命令，限制美國國民和企業在45天後停止與TikTok和騰訊微信的交易。此前國務卿蓬佩奧已提出了對中國的「清潔網絡」行動。

樓價過高一向是香港亟待解決的問題之一。觀乎香港自1997年回歸後的22個財政年度（1997/98至2018/19），四類主要私人物業售價指數升幅可觀，私人住宅上升超過130%，私人寫字樓上升逾150%，零售業樓宇升幅約210%，分層工廠大廈增幅更逾420%。樓價升勢與地價高企關係密不可分。

Using a comprehensive sample of credit card data from a leading Chinese bank, we show that government bureaucrats receive 16% higher credit lines than non-bureaucrats with similar income and demographics, but their accounts experience a significantly higher likelihood of delinquency and debt forgiveness. Regions associated with greater credit provision to bureaucrats open more branches and receive more deposits from the local government. After staggered corruption crackdowns of provincial-level political officials, the new credit cards originated to bureaucrats in exposed regions do not enjoy a credit line premium, and bureaucrats’ delinquency and reinstatement rates are similar to those of non-bureaucrats.