One recent policy tend to improve teacher quality is providing conditional grants to trainees in teacher colleges and commit them to working in disadvantaged areas upon graduation. Yet little is known whether such policies attract better trainees. This paper evaluates a conditional grant program...

IEMS Faculty Associate Prof. Naubahar Sharif looks into the challenges facing Hong Kong-owned manufacturing firms in Guangdong, assesses the role of innovation in firm survival, and recommends areas for improvement to policymakers in both Hong Kong and Guangdong.

Dr. Christina Jenq, a post-doctoral researcher with HKUST IEMS, inspects the role of 1990's era reforms to urban Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) on the widening gender imbalance in urban employment, with males accounting for a significantly larger share of urban employment than females....

IEMS Faculty Associate Prof. Wenbo Wang examines how people become green by studying a policy change in China which obligated consumers to purchase plastic bags rather than receive them for free.

Prof. Xiaogang Wu, an HKUST Faculty Associate and Professor of Social Science at HKUST, investigates the earnings disadvantages faced by rural Chinese migrants in urban cities as compared to their local urban counterparts, and uses empirical evidence to conclude that such disadvantages are...

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) represent the backbone of China's economy, yet they lack access to bank credit. SMEs thus rely on a wide range of alternative sources, including informal finance, online peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms, registered non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs), and...

The Xi-Li administration faces the dual challenge of managing state capitalism and shadow banking as China enters a phase of more moderate economic growth. During China's first three decades of reform, private sector development occurred in parallel with prioritization of state-owned enterprises...

Prof. Albert Park, Director of HKUST IEMS, Chair Professor at HKUST's Division of Social Science, and Professor at HKUST's Department of Economics, reviews the efficacy of minimum wage policies across BRICS countries, i.e. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, highlighting their...

Prof. Barry Sautman, an HKUST IEMS Faculty Associate and political scientist at HKUST, discusses the myths about the extent of localization of Chinese enterprises in Africa. He also recommends how African governments can further encourage Chinese enterprises to further contribution to employment...

We provide the first evidence that promotion incentives can influence effort of employees in the public sector by studying China’s system of annual evaluations and promotions for teachers. Theoretical predictions from a tournament model of promotion incentives are tested using panel data...