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強積金是香港的強制性公積金計劃，旨在為居民提供基本的退休保障。在過去25年裡，強積金對香港普惠金融的發展起了重要的推動作用，成功鼓勵了家庭參與證券市場。然而，其年化回報率偏低的問题一直備受批評。隨著積金易平台即將推出，不同強積金計劃將可以整合到統一數碼制度中，這正好提供一個有利的契機，以對香港的主要退休儲蓄制度作出重大改進。 關穎倫教授、Thomas Maurer教授及太明珠教授分析了導致強積金表現欠佳的三個主要原因：資產配置過於保守，限制了收益潜力；部分強積金產品質量不高，管理或投資策略存在缺陷；以及高昂的費用，直接侵蝕了投資者的回報。針對這些問題，他們向政府提出了以下建議：首先，政府可以修訂預設投資策略以進一步降低費率，同時積金局亦可以邀請收費較低的新服務供應商進入市場。其次，政府應積極監察資產配置，透過採取規定性措施、推廣理財教育及篩選強積金資訊，協助市場參與者了解強積金複雜的投資產品空間。第三，政府可以開拓強積金的產品空間，引入更多元化的投資選擇。最後，積金局應提高數據透明度，並善用其數據資源進行分析。

Innovative firms must trade off disclosing to investors and maintaining secrecy from competitors. We study this trade-off in a sample of IP licenses mandatorily disclosed by US public firms, whose contents can be temporarily redacted. Hand classifying the redacted information, we find that firms with valuable IP in competitive markets redact IP information more often. Markets react positively to the redaction of IP information, consistent with theoretical predictions rationalizing a separating equilibrium in which nondisclosure signals more valuable IP. Our results suggest that credible nondisclosure partially resolves information frictions for innovative public firms when facilitated by sophisticated investors.

Banks’ information technology (IT) capabilities affect their ability to serve customers during the COVID-19 pandemic, which generates an unexpected and unprecedented shock that shifts banking services from in-person to digital. Amid mobility restrictions, banks with better IT experience larger reductions in physical branch visits and larger increases in website traffic, implying a larger shift to digital banking. Stronger IT banks are able to originate more Paycheck Protection Program loans to small business borrowers, especially in areas with more severe COVID-19 outbreaks, higher internet use, and higher bank competition. Those banks also attract more deposit flows and receive better mobile customer reviews during the pandemic.

Compliance-driven investments in technology—or “RegTech”—are growing rapidly. To understand the effects on the financial sector, we study firms’ responses to new internal control requirements. Affected firms make significant investments in ERP and hardware. These expenditures then enable complementary investments that are leveraged for noncompliance purposes, leading to modest savings from avoided customer complaints and misconduct. IT budgets rise and profits fall, especially at small firms, and acquisition activity and market concentration increase. Our results illustrate how regulation can directly and indirectly affect technology adoption, which in turn affects noncompliance functions and market structure.

Disputes over transactions on two-sided platforms are common and usually arbitrated through platforms’ customer service departments or third-party service providers. This paper studies crowd-judging, a novel crowdsourcing mechanism whereby users (buyers and sellers) volunteer as jurors to decide disputes arising from the platform. Using a rich data set from the dispute resolution center at Taobao, a leading Chinese e-commerce platform, we aim to understand this innovation and propose and analyze potential operational improvements with a focus on in-group bias (buyer jurors favor the buyer, likewise for sellers). Platform users, especially sellers, share the perception that in-group bias is prevalent and systematically sways case outcomes as the majority of users on such platforms are buyers, undermining the legitimacy of crowd-judging. Our empirical findings suggest that such concern is not completely unfounded: on average, a seller juror is approximately 10% likelier (than a buyer juror) to vote for a seller. Such bias is aggravated among cases that are decided by a thin margin and when jurors perceive that their in-group’s interests are threatened. However, the bias diminishes as jurors gain experience: a user’s bias reduces by nearly 95% as experience grows from zero to the sample median level. Incorporating these findings and juror participation dynamics in a simulation study, the paper delivers three managerial insights. First, under the existing voting policy, in-group bias influences the outcomes of no more than 2% of cases. Second, simply increasing crowd size through either a larger case panel or aggressively recruiting new jurors may not be efficient in reducing the adverse effect of in-group bias. Finally, policies that allocate cases dynamically could simultaneously mitigate the impact of in-group bias and nurture a more sustainable juror pool.

In canonical models of investment dynamics under uncertainty, “time-to-build” in investment decisions implies that uncertainty negatively impacts firm values and aggregate capital productivity. However, capital budgeting, which involves ex-ante information acquisition and state-contingent investment decisions, can potentially ameliorate time-to-build frictions. Reduced-form evidence using firm-level data on sales and investment expectations and errors supports both mechanisms. Incorporating capital budgeting into a standard investment model, our calibrated model reveals that state-contingent investment planning and information acquisition reduce aggregate productivity losses by 41% and 17%, respectively. Moreover, gains from planning accrue primarily to less productive firms, while information acquisition benefits higher productivity ones.

基於種種社會經濟問題，香港有數十萬勞動人口及其家庭已經移居海外。與此同時，受香港政府積極進取的人才計劃所吸引，過去一年也有數十萬人從外地來港。人口流動對香港的勞動力和人才庫有何影響？關穎倫博士、鄧希煒教授和王柏林博士通過分析領英（LinkedIn）社交資料和政府統計數據評估香港的勞動力市場和經濟前景。