Discover about the School

新型冠狀病毒疫情揮之未去，香港的經濟損失已高達6000億港元。要重振經濟，恢復正常生活，唯一的途徑就是接種疫苗。特區政府自2月底啟動疫苗接種計劃，至今4個多月才接種了451萬劑（截至周二），進度未如理想。按通行的標準（即每100人接種的劑數）加以比較：香港54劑，新加坡快了將近一倍，達到98劑，中國內地90劑、美國99劑、英國118劑、以色列125劑，最高的是阿聯酋157劑

現代社會日趨進步，高度分工，互相依存。僱員需要得到僱主的信任、政府需要得到人民的信任、一家公司需要其客戶的信任，否則就會事倍功半。當然，信任往往是雙向的：僱主也須得到僱員的信任；一家公司要取信於另一家公司，也希望後者值得信任，餘此類推。

New research indicates that China’s stock market is leaving behind its casino reputation and is capable of fuelling growth

New research by Professor Roni Michaely and other co-authors shows that while Socially Responsible Investment Funds are good at picking firms that adopt such behaviours, they do not inspire those firms to further improve their performance.

HKU Business School Professor James K.S. Kung has recently won the Royal Economic Society Prize for the best article published in The Economic Journal in 2020. His paper, “Long Live Keju! The Persistent Effects of China's Civil Examination System”, co-authored with Dr. Chicheng Ma and Dr. Ting Chen, examines the long-term consequences of China’s millennium-long civil examination system for human capital or educational outcomes.

最近，新疆的棉花成為國際重要議題，使平凡的棉花，再度引起關注。若論單一商品，今天的棉花，遠不若芯片、石油或黃金那麼受人重視。然而，大多數經濟體由農業邁向工業，初期都以紡織業為主，而作為農產品的棉花，是紡織業的主要原材料，也可以說是經濟發展由農業到工業的橋樑。不單如此，棉花及其有關的紡織業，數百年來均與全球政經發展緊密地交織一起。這裏就棉花對全球經濟發展作幾方面簡單的回顧。

Dr Sangwoon Park’s study takes a scientific look at what makes friendships at work tick and how these friendships affect productivity in the workplace. His findings reveal that worker productivity declines when friends socialize at work, but that, surprisingly, people are also willing to “pay” almost 5% of their wages to work near a friend – suggesting that friends who work together get more out of their jobs than just money.

We use staggered share repurchases legalization from 1985 to 2010 across the world to examine its impact on corporate behaviors. We find that share-repurchasing firms do not cut dividends as a substitution. The cash for repurchasing shares comes more from internal cash than external debt issuance, leading to reductions in capital expenditures and R&D expenses. While this strategy boosts stock prices, it results in lower long-run Tobin's Q, profitability, growth, and innovation, accompanied by lower insider ownership. Tax benefits and paying out temporary earnings are two primary reasons that firms repurchase.

拜登上台後，白宮摒除了特朗普時期誇誇其談、不幹實事的作風，各種政策重上軌道，特別是應付新冠肺炎和處理肺炎帶來的經濟後遺症，都顯得積極進取。也許由於壓制疫情和提振經濟是當務之急，其他政策都要讓路。以外交政策為例，拜登在上任約兩個星期後才在國務院作簡單的闡釋，但其中有關外貿方面着墨不多。不過，我們仍可以從拜登在競選時對有關問題的論述、和他上台後執行的政策，了解他的政府怎樣處理美國的外貿問題。

過去兩年來，香港經歷了內外環境巨變。社會運動影響下，本港經濟持續低迷，加上中美貿易談判曲折、新冠肺炎疫情衝擊 、世界經濟下行，無疑令本地困局雪上加霜。失業人數不斷攀升，青年失業率更遠高於其他年齡組別。若要走出逆境，年輕一代需要多元發展，而粵港澳大灣區建設正好為他們開闢一條發展的新跑道。

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.

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。

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.