Yanhui Wu
Dr. Yanhui WU
Economics
Management and Strategy
Associate Professor

3917 8508

KK 931

Academic & Professional Qualification

Ph.D. in Economics, London School of Economics

MSc. in Economics, London School of Economics

B.A. in Economics, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University

Biography

Dr. Wu is Associate Professor of Economics and of Management and Strategy at the University of Hong Kong and the Associate Director of Institute of Digital Economy and Innovation. He is also a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR, London) and a non-residential Fellow of the 21 Century China Center at UC San Diego. Prior to HKU, he was Assistant Professor of Finance and Business Economics at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. His primary research interest is media economics, in which he has studied how social media affects economic performance, policy making, and consumer behavior in China. Another stream of his research focuses on creative production in the digital economy and the welfare implications of AI-guided economic activities. Recently, he has collaborated with data scientists to apply cutting-edge big data methods to various areas in the social sciences. His work has been published at top economics, management, and statistics journals, including the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Management Science, and Organization Science.

Teaching
  • Economics of Organization and Strategy (PhD, Master)
  • Managerial Economics (MBA)
  • Causal Inference (Undergraduate)
  • Big Data Economics (Undergraduate)
Research Interest
  • Media Economics, Organizational Economics, Development Economics, Chinese Economy, Big Data and Computational Social Science
Selected Publications
  • Street-level responsiveness of city governments in China, Germany, and the United States (with Ekkehard Köhler and John G Matsusaka), Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming, (2023).
  • Competition, Contracts, and Creativity: Evidence from Novel Writing in a Platform Market (with Feng Zhu), Management Science, 68(12): 8613-8634, December, (2022).
  • Intentional Control of Type I Error Over Unconscious Data Distortion: A Neyman-Pearson Approach to Text Classification (with Lucy Xia, Richard Zhao and Xin Tong), Journal of the American Statistical Association, 116(533): 68-81, March, (2021).
  • Media Bias in China (with Bei Qin and David Strӧmberg), American Economic Review, 108(9): 2442-76, September, (2018).
  • Incentive Contracts and the Allocation of Talent, Economic Journal, 127(607): 2744-2783, December, (2017).
  • Authority, Incentives and Performance: Evidence from a Chinese Newspaper, Review of Economics and Statistics, 99(1): 16-31, March, (2017).
  • Why Does China Allow Freer Social Media? Protests versus Surveillance and Propaganda (with Bei Qin and David Strӧmberg), Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(1): 117-40 (2017).
  • Organizational Structure and Product Choice in Knowledge Intensive Firms, Management Science, 61(8): 1830-1848 (2015).
  • Knowledge, Communication and Organizational Capabilities (with Luis Garicano), Organization Science, 23(5):1382-1397 (2012).
Awards and Honours
  • Hong Kong GRF Grant (No. 17500321), PI, 2021-2024
  • European Research Council Advanced Grant, Co-PI, 2018-2022
  • USC Marshall Outlier Research Fund, PI, 2016-2018
  • USC Greif Entrepreneurship Research Award, 2014
  • Vincent Cheng Scholarship (LSE), 2007-2010
  • Chevening Scholarship (British Council), 2003-2004
Recent Publications
With men of letters gone, how to retain rare talents in Hong Kong?

上周末,幾位朋友談起文壇現狀,大嘆香港連失健筆,人才凋零。去年年中倪匡仙逝,年底走了西西,今年年初劉紹銘過身;加上老病的、封筆的、歸隱的、出走的,昔日風流,盡被雨打風吹去。

With men of letters gone, how to retain rare talents in Hong Kong?

上周末,幾位朋友談起文壇現狀,大嘆香港連失健筆,人才凋零。去年年中倪匡仙逝,年底走了西西,今年年初劉紹銘過身;加上老病的、封筆的、歸隱的、出走的,昔日風流,盡被雨打風吹去。

Competition, Contracts, and Creativity: Evidence from Novel Writing in a Platform Market

A growing number of people today are participating in the gig economy, working as independent contractors on short-term projects. We study the effects of competition on gig workers’ effort and creativity on a Chinese novel-writing platform. Authors produce and sell their works chapter by chapter under a revenue-sharing or pay-by-the-word contract with the platform. Exploiting a regulation that induced a massive entry of novels in the romance genre but not other genres, we find that, on average, intensified competition led authors to produce content more quickly, whereas its effect on book novelty was weak. However, revenue-sharing books responded to competition substantially more than pay-by-the-word books, particularly regarding novelty. Moreover, the effect of competition on novelty is considerably stronger for books at earlier stages of the product life cycle. Finally, the platform increased the promotion of contracted books, which disproportionately favored pay-by-the-word books. We discuss the implications of these results for creative workers, platform firms, and policy makers in the gig economy.

Debunking Five Myths about the Hong Kong Economy

日前,港大經管學院召集對經濟政策研究感興趣的學者,為香港的經濟未來出謀劃策。筆者和同事鄧希煒教授主動請纓,研究香港如何創造更多優質工作這一課題。

Debunking Five Myths about the Hong Kong Economy

日前,港大經管學院召集對經濟政策研究感興趣的學者,為香港的經濟未來出謀劃策。筆者和同事鄧希煒教授主動請纓,研究香港如何創造更多優質工作這一課題。

Bullshit Jobs and Splendid Waste

開宗明義,這個俗得近乎粗鄙又雅得有點詩意的標題,不完全是筆者原創。《狗屁工作理論》(Bullshit Jobs: A Theory)是在2018年出版便迅速竄紅的社會科學書,內容痛斥當下歐美社會衍生出無數可有可無卻又報酬豐厚的狗屁工。作者是已故美國人類學者格雷伯(David Graeber),字裏行間怒氣沖天,不惜用上打手(goon)及幫閒(flunky)這些帶有羞辱性的詞彙。

Bullshit Jobs and Splendid Waste

開宗明義,這個俗得近乎粗鄙又雅得有點詩意的標題,不完全是筆者原創。《狗屁工作理論》(Bullshit Jobs: A Theory)是在2018年出版便迅速竄紅的社會科學書,內容痛斥當下歐美社會衍生出無數可有可無卻又報酬豐厚的狗屁工。作者是已故美國人類學者格雷伯(David Graeber),字裏行間怒氣沖天,不惜用上打手(goon)及幫閒(flunky)這些帶有羞辱性的詞彙。

Hong Kong needs more Resilience than Robustness

近日筆者與親友以及同事、學生交流,始終離不開兩個問題。一是新冠疫情過後,香港會恢復到疫前那樣嗎?二是這段期間離開香港的人,有多少會回來呢?一波波疫情下來,不少人對未來悲觀了許多,不敢預期明天會更好,但求至少可以回到從前;這種心態大概不是香港人獨有。

Hong Kong needs more Resilience than Robustness

近日筆者與親友以及同事、學生交流,始終離不開兩個問題。一是新冠疫情過後,香港會恢復到疫前那樣嗎?二是這段期間離開香港的人,有多少會回來呢?一波波疫情下來,不少人對未來悲觀了許多,不敢預期明天會更好,但求至少可以回到從前;這種心態大概不是香港人獨有。

Soft Landing: Neither Inflation nor Regulation will Produce Prosperity

自從新冠疫情肆虐全球以來,各國政府紛紛使出各種調控手段,試圖消除疫情對經濟的負面影響。