研究焦點

Executive agencies play a pivotal role in shaping the regulatory environment by crafting rules, enforcing regulations, and overseeing government contracts—all of which can have a profound impact on businesses. For firms, this potential impact creates a clear incentive for firms to influence these agencies, particularly during the critical stages of rulemaking and enforcement. In this context, lobbying emerges as a key tool that companies use to mold the regulatory landscape to their advantage. Unlike politicians, whose decisions are often swayed by electoral cycles and campaign contributions, agency officials are not elected, serve longer terms, and are less susceptible to direct political pressures. As a result, engaging in lobbying efforts with executive agencies is both more complicated and strategically crucial for firms operating within heavily regulated industries. However, the dynamics of such lobbying remain underexplored in the literature.

2023年剛結束的兔年春節內地民眾過得怎樣？調查顯示，兔年春節期間，民眾的幸福感平均值為5.47，介於“比較開心”與“開心”之間（1為最低值，7為最高值），“比較開心”以上人群占比為83.1%。

To combat stress and burnout, employers are increasingly offering benefits like virtual mental health support, spontaneous days or even weeks off, meeting-free days, and flexible work scheduling. Despite these efforts and the increasing number of employees buying into the importance of wellness, the effort is lost if you don’t actually recover. So, if you feel like you’re burning out, what works when it comes to recovering from stress? The authors discuss the “recovery paradox” — that when our bodies and minds need to recover and reset the most, we’re the least likely and able to do something about it — and present five research-backed strategies for recovering from stress at work.

Jian Zhang from the HKU Business School along with authors from the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, INSEAD in Singapore and the PBC School of Finance at Tsinghua University, helped to advance understanding of this phenomenon in their recent paper, called Air Pollution, Behavioral Bias, and the Disposition Effect in China. The team studied how air pollution can affect mental health by intensifying a certain type of cognitive bias observed in financial markets.

Take the recent study by Chen Lin and Mingzhu Tai from the HKU Business School, conducted with collaborators from the University of California, Berkeley and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Their paper addressed a fundamental worry for almost everyone during the pandemic: Money. Specifically, they examined how people in the U.S. saved money in response to COVID-19.

In their study “Do multinationals transfer culture? Evidence on female employment in China”, published in the Journal of International Economics in July 2021, authors Heiwai TANG and Yifan ZHANG show that MNC practices do impact the behaviour of local companies, and the outcome is a positive impact on the productivity of local companies.

虎年春節前後，新冠疫情在内地多個城市再度爆發，「就地過年」也再次成為人們春節的選項。香港大學副教授賈軾、香港中文大學（深圳）教授賈建民、清華大學教授薛瀾和博士生袁韻等組成的研究團隊再次開展《春節幸福感與疫情應對行為》的全國性問卷調查。研究團隊於春節前、後通過內地的調研平臺Credamo對同一群體開展兩次調查，分別收集問卷3500份和3016份，樣本來自全國256個城市，年齡段以20-50歲有春節探親需要的群體為主，覆蓋各類社會群體與收入階層。

香港經濟及商業策略研究所副總監鄧希煒教授及團隊與香港生產力促進局共同發佈香港再工業化研究報告。此報告旨在分析香港三大被視為極具競爭優勢的 先進製造行業──食品科技、健康科技和綠色科技的當前表現及未來潛力。

Since Max Weber, Confucianism has been widely viewed as being in opposition to capitalist or modern growth in historical China, especially in comparison with the rise of Western Europe after the Protestant Reformation. In pre-19th century China, the absence of industrialization or capitalism is partially attributed to the conservative nature of Confucian culture, particularly the emphasis on the ‘adjustment’ to the world and the depreciation of pursuing wealth, among others. And perhaps more importantly, the clan as a tangible organization of Confucianism restricted interpersonal cooperation to the family or lineage scope. Such ‘kinship-based morality’, in contrast to the ‘generalised morality’ enforced by market institutions in the West, paved the way for China’s divergent developmental path from the West. In a recent study, Zhiwu Chen, Andrew Sinclair and Chicheng Ma find another channel through which Confucianism inhibits capitalism: competition in financial markets.