Information Liability

Agriculture plays a critical role in emerging economies worldwide. Unfortunately, however, farmers in such regions remain trapped in poverty, due in large part to information asymmetry in agricultural supply chains. Governments and farming cooperatives are in urgent need of strategies to redress this imbalance and improve farmers’ welfare and profitability ... Read More

Is green coffee bean extract a miracle cure for obesity? Are raspberry ketones or saffron extract magic weight loss ingredients? Regardless of the veracity of these claims, the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz has endorsed those and many products to the viewers of The Dr. Oz Show. This has created “the Oz effect” of increased interest—and may perhaps have ... Read More

Is green coffee bean extract a miracle cure for obesity? Are raspberry ketones or saffron extract magic weight loss ingredients? Regardless of the veracity of these claims, the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz has endorsed those and many products to the viewers of The Dr. Oz Show. This has created “the Oz effect” of increased interest—and may perhaps have ... 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

Social media platforms are investing millions in fighting “fake news,” but little is known about how effective their strategies are, say HKUST’s LEE Dong Won and colleagues. Offering much-needed guidance in today’s era of disinformation, the authors shed new light on the propagation of false and misleading news, identifying how it spreads and, critically ... Read More

Deciding how much to grow can be difficult for farmers in developing countries, who largely operate without crucial market information. Governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are attempting to address this knowledge gap, but how widely should they deliver such information to the maximum benefit of farmers? Is wider information distribution ... 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

For Chinese firms, gaining patents for innovations may be a promising way to gain influence in the international arena, according to HKUST’s Jiatao Li and a co-researcher. Such patents act as a powerful signal of technological quality and market potential for U.S. firms who seek to introduce such innovations at home. This research offers novel insights into ... Read More

A few years ago, a data breach compromised the information of more than 100 million Target customers and cost the company US$148 million. Target had outsourced its security to a managed security service (MSS) provider called FireEye, but then failed to take action after FireEye alerted it to the breach. In a timely study, HKUST professors Kai-Lung Hui and ... Read More

Agriculture—the science of cultivating soil, growing crops, and raising livestock—is the primary economic sector of many developing economies throughout the world. Within this context, farmer producer organisations (FPOs) aim to combat poverty by reducing inefficiencies in agricultural markets. For example, FPOs work closely with farmers to integrate ... Read More