Lending is a central pillar of a modern economy and policy-makers are strongly interested in understanding its main drivers and associated risks. This project aims to identify new determinants of credit provision that extend beyond balance-sheet type frictions typically studied in the field of financial intermediation. For example, we aim to understand how market structure may affect the supply of credit and thereby the transmission of monetary policy to the real economy. We also examine how short-term shocks in the real economy may affect both the demand and supply of long-term credit, as well as the associated risks that this mechanism may generate. The work is empirical in nature and utilises micro-level data from a variety of international sources to identify causal relations that can directly inform the ever-evolving process of rule-making in bank regulation.

The investment advisory business manages over US$66 trillion in assets just in the US. Despite its size, the regulation and enforcement of legal requirements for these firms are inconsistent between states and the federal government. In this project, we study the impact different regulatory designs have on adviser misconduct. The project also studies whether external and internal governance mechanisms are substitutes. We also examine whether investment advisory firms themselves establish internal controls and governance systems that are consistent with minimising misconduct among its employees subject to maximising firm profits. The project findings will be relevant to investors, policy makers, and practitioners in the investment advisory business.

This study examines how the design and implementation of state subsidy programs shape firm behaviours and performances in China. Working with the Beijing Municipal Commission of Science and Technology, I investigate how random factors such as the gender composition of the evaluation committee, the temporal order of the review, and the seniority of committee members, influence a firm’s likelihood of receiving state grants. Furthermore, I examine the conditions through which small amounts of public subsidy grants may help boost firms’ survival rate and innovation activities.

In this project, we study the gender peer effects on students’ academic performance and non-cognitive outcomes. The analysis uses a nationally representative survey of middle school students in China and focuses on schools that randomly assign students to classrooms. Preliminary findings show that having a higher proportion of female peers in class improves students’ test scores and non-cognitive outcomes, such as mental stress, social acclimation and satisfaction, and disciplinary problems. There is evidence of improved classroom environment, teacher-student interactions, and teacher’s level of job satisfaction when there are more female students in the class.

This research project centres on designing and testing effective pricing schemes for the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP2) system. ERP2 is a Global-Navigation-Satellite-System (GNSS)-based, in-vehicle meter that allows for more flexibility in managing traffic congestion and other negative externalities through distance, time, and route-based road pricing. The Land Transport Authority of Singapore (LTA) is rolling out ERP2 in the coming years but has yet to decide how distance-based charging will be implemented under the system. This project focuses on designing ERP2 pricing scheme, testing the effectiveness of the proposed schemes through Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT), and understanding the underlying behavioural mechanisms.

This project intends to improve the adoption and utilisation of distance education in China’s underdeveloped regions. In this study, we plan to use government/school funded information and communications technology investment as an exogenous intervention that enables Internet access for teachers. The teachers’ subsequent online shopping activities quantify their internet proficiency. We will then measure this effect of proficiency against the intensity of distance education engagement. Therefore, we will empirically identify the obstacles in current engagement, design treatments for improvement (e.g. monetary incentives, training on flipped classroom), and eventually test the treatments using field experiments.

This project studies how variance shocks affect asset prices. Variance risk affects investors’ portfolio decisions. Positive variance shock means smaller investment opportunities for investors. As a result, investors consider the possibility of variance shocks when making their portfolio decisions. This information – the possibility of a variance shock and how asset prices react to changes in the shock –is critical for investors after major finance events similar to the Global Financial Crisis. In this project, I propose a new out-of-sample prediction methodology of market returns using the variance risk premium and explore several asset pricing implications for individual stock returns.

Our project aims to address the impact of gender composition on group interactions and decision making in the context of two typical behavioural biases that are of particular interest to project management: (a) planning fallacy and (b) escalation of commitment. Both biases have been widely shown to have a pervasive influence on project management. This research makes an important contribution to the literature on project decision making, which has mostly focused on studying individual decision makers. Previous research have not considered the impact that group-specific factors—such as gender composition and the resulting quality of within-group interactions—might have. Our work will provide managers with guidelines to manage the increasing gender diversity in organisations and better take advantage of the potential benefits of this diversity while avoiding possible downsides.

The advances in internet technology over the past decade have accumulated voluminous amounts of social interaction data in different business contexts. The wide availability of these data has attracted researchers from both business and economics, and computer science to analyse customers and their online behaviours. An overt gap exists in the perspectives that researchers in different areas take. Business and economics researchers mainly focus on analysing the triggers and consequences of certain customer behaviours, while computer science researchers are more focused on developing smarter and more efficient algorithms to infer the true social connections between customers and their social interaction data, without inquiring if and how customers may influence each other through their connections and interactions. Motivated by the need to bridge the gap, we engage in several lines of investigations incorporating the perspectives from both fields, to deepen our understanding and utilisation of social interaction data, and to influence customer behaviours.

Why do large business group families in Asia tend to marry their family members to each other? It is possible that the marriage ties among large family business groups are driven by their needs of resource access and maintaining market position and hence the groups unite with each other in order to secure the resources and coordinate prices. It is also possible, however, that marriage ties form to maintain an elite social status. Elite families establish marriage ties with each other to sustain the exclusive boundaries of their status group and maintain their apex identities. Although family business groups are widely connected to each other through various formal connections and informal social ties, less attention has been paid to marriage and its impact on group strategy and performance. Drawn from interdisciplinary studies in sociology and management science, I plan to develop a theoretical framework that specifies how resource considerations of business group families promote marriage ties and how it may strategically vary among families with distinct social status during the market transition. This study highlights the potential trade-offs that family business groups may confront when they form marriage ties in emerging economies where traditional social structures and market-oriented transitions co-exist. I also seek to contribute to research on business groups in emerging economies by switching the traditional focus on intragroup networks and their outcomes to the genesis and evolution of intergroup networks. The hypotheses derived from our framework will be tested with a unique data from family businesses in Taiwan.