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. Sasidaran Gopalan, an HKUST IEMS Post-Doctoral Fellow, examines some of the multi-dimensional implications of foreign bank entry in emerging markets. Foreign banks have been growing in importance in several emerging market economies and they are expected to play systemically important roles...

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.

IEMS Faculty Associate Prof. Sujata Visaria and colleagues explore how microfinance programmes can be fine-tuned to more effectively address the microcredit promise of financial inclusion and helping the poor.

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...

Critics argue that India’s mismanaged Public Distribution System (PDS), which sells subsidized cereals to poor families, should be replaced by cash transfers. Others fear cash may be misused. Using National Sample Survey data, this paper demonstrates that families treat additional PDS...

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...