In today’s fast-changing e-commerce landscape, businesses are increasingly relying on two novel strategies for winning customers: referral marketing and product discounting. However, this promising pairing may have a sting in the tail, according to HKUST’s Hong Xu and Kai-Lung Hui and colleagues. Although individually effective, these two marketing tools may ... Read More

Since the 1960s, agricultural production has moved towards contract farming in an attempt to lower both costs and risks of production while increasing quantities and both farmers and buyers’ profits. The authors of this paper have sought to determine and analyse the effect this move has had on the efficiency and returns enjoyed by both contract and non ... Read More

To thrive in a world in which common prosperity is as important as corporate profit-making, the private sector must find new, more sustainable ways to operate. But can private businesses really do well by doing good? One option, according to HKUST’s Abhiroop Mukherjee and colleagues, is for businesses to partner with governments to help the poor realize the ... Read More

Historically, businesses with the largest cash flows and capital reserves were the biggest investors—but this is no longer the case. Economists have long struggled to explain why the relationship between corporate investment and cash flow has weakened and even disappeared in the last few decades. Thanks to the pioneering work of HKUST’s Chu Zhang and co ... Read More

Executives at manufacturing companies have many ways to express how they expect their organizations to perform. Indeed, they regularly issue forecasts that spell out how they see the future unfolding. These forecasts often include predictions about a wide range of variables, which include economic conditions, market trends, customer behavior, and company ... Read More

In financial markets, asset-management companies increasingly rely on data to generate profitable trading strategies. However, developing skills in data analysis and processing is a costly and uncertain process, especially as many forms of data emerging in today’s Information Age are entirely new to investors. To use such “alternative” data to make the right ... Read More

Bribery and corruption arising from procurement are rampant in developing countries. According to the World Bank, bribery is involved in US$1.5 trillion worth of government contracts for goods and services. Organizations worldwide are joining hands to tackle this endemic and growing problem. Filling an important knowledge gap, HKUST’s Ying-Ju Chen and co ... Read More

An algorithm can be simply defined as a set of instructions for solving a problem or accomplishing a task. Within many business domains, algorithms are rapidly taking over the decision-making abilities of humans. However, full automation of business activity is only found in certain industries, such as manufacturing, where robots can work in a well ... Read More

Investors, analysts, and other stakeholders rely on a slew of materials when measuring how businesses perform. Some of those materials are issued directly by company executives, and they typically include a particularly important set of documents: management earnings forecasts. Unsurprisingly, management forecasts do not always perfectly predict actual ... Read More

Nowadays, the high demand on companies for innovation and adaptability has meant that employees are increasingly being asked to take the initiative more often and demonstrate leadership qualities, even if being a leader was not part of the original job description. However, while this phenomenon has led scholars to look at the aspects that lead people not in ... Read More