Since the market reform of 1978, China has seen phenomenal economic growth; however, this has come at the cost of significant environmental damage and rising social inequality. As such, the 2004 campaign of “Building a Harmonious Socialist Society” has become a key party resolution and government objective. Ultimately, China places maintaining social ... Read More

Movies are full of highs and lows, plot twists, and bursts of action and dialogue. Understanding how viewers respond to such lively and fluctuating content in real time is challenging. In recent work, HKUST’s Wenbo Wang and colleagues developed a novel construct, “moment-to-moment synchronicity” (MTMS), to capture viewers’ engagement with dynamic movie ... Read More

“What is your greatest weakness?” Routinely, professional and personal situations require us to disclose negative information about ourselves, but in doing so, we run the risk of damaging how others view us. In a series of five unique studies, HKUST’s Professor Bradford Bitterly and his colleague examined whether humor can make us seem more likable and ... Read More

The list of analyst research outputs has been expanding over the past decades, and one prominent analyst research output that has become increasingly important is capital expenditure (capex) forecasts. Yet we know little about the effects of capex forecasts, in particular, whether the information conveyed in capex forecasts is useful to investors, and more ... Read More

Chinese venture capital (VC) firms suffer from imperfect information and poor legal protections when deciding whether to continue to invest in a company or cut it loose, according to HKUST researcher Yanfeng Zheng and a colleague. Analysing more than a decade’s worth of deals, the authors established that Chinese VCs are more likely to terminate investments ... Read More

Distributive bargaining is innately competitive: one party cannot benefit without the other’s losing out. To secure the best deals, good negotiation skills are crucial. Negotiators usually opt for one of two opposing communication styles—warm and friendly or tough and firm. But which has the upper hand in a distributive bargaining context? Negotiation expert ... Read More

Step-down care units (SDUs) are a cost-effective way to treat patients referred from intensive care units (ICUs), but they could be failing patients admitted from emergency departments (EDs). In an important new study, HKUST’s Lijian Lu and co-researchers examine the effectiveness of SDUs and identify stark differences in patient outcomes. ED patients ... Read More

Opaque selling is a marketing strategy adopted by industries such as retailing and travel under which firms sell end-of-the-season inventory of different products as a single opaque good and customers find out the specific products they actually get only after they have made the purchase. Opaque selling entails a “double-blind” process: customers do not know ... Read More

To defeat others in the battle for market share, firms routinely launch different loyalty programs, deeply influencing customer purchasing decisions. The widespread availability of such programs imply competing firms face the challenge of disentangling the interactive impact to make informed pricing and promotional decisions, especially in competitive ... Read More

It is well known that financial market regulation has grown stronger over the years. For example, legislation has mandated that publicly-listed firms increase their transparency by disclosing more information in their financial statements. This level of disclosure has had the effect of reducing the cost of capital, levelling the information playing field for ... Read More