Competition | Center for Economic Policy

Research Affiliate Yao Amber Li Associate Professor, Department of Economics
Associate Director, Center for Economic Development Professor Yao Amber Li is currently an Associate Professor of Economics in School of Business and Management, the Associate Director of Center for Economic Development and the Dean of Business & Management at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). She has been serving as Vice-chairperson of the Standing Committee of CTRG (China Trade Research Group) since 2019 and Joint Secretary-General of the Secretariat of the Quality Alliance at Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau University Alliance since 2020.

Research Affiliate Xinyu Hua Associate Professor, Department of Economics Prof. Hua's areas of research interests include law and economics, industrial organization, and contract theory.

Working Paper Series Financial Fraud and Investor Awareness We study a retail financial market with naive investors who are unaware of the possible financial fraud. In our model, firms strategically choose whether to offer normal or fraudulent products to possibly unaware investors. Having new firms in the market makes offering normal products less profitable and thus discourages firms from behaving honestly. In a leader-follower environment, an honest firm may sell a normal product to sophisticated investors, while a dishonest firm targets only naive investors. By Zhengqing Gui, Xiaojian Zhao

Research Affiliate Pak Hung Au Associate Professor, Department of Economics Pak Hung Au is an associate professor at the Department of Economics of the HKUST. He obtained his BA (Double Honors) in Economics and Mathematics at University of British Columbia and his PhD degree at Northwestern University. He worked at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and Nanyang Technological University before joining HKUST. His research interests include industrial organization, contract theory, information economics and experimental economics.

Working Paper Series A Model of Trade with Endogenous Product Design We study a model of international trade in which firms choose between a board product design that targets mainstream consumers, and a niche product design that targets specific market segments. Assuming that local firms have absolute advantage in providing niche products to the local market, we show that in equilibrium, the more efficient firms adopt a board design and export whereas the less efficient firms adopt a niche design and do not export. By Pak Hung Au, Xiaoping Chen

Publications An Empirical Study of Scoring Auctions and Quality Manipulation Corruption

Publications Anticollusion Enforcement: Justice for Consumers and Equity for Firms By Alminas Žaldokas (on leave), Sudipto Dasgupta

Research Affiliate Ying-Ju Chen Chair Professor, Department of Information Systems, Business Statistics and Operations Management
Chair Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics Ying-Ju Chen holds a joint appointment between School of Business and Management (Department of ISOM) and School of Engineering (Department of IEDA) at HKUST. Prior to the current position, he was a faculty in the Department of IEOR at UC Berkeley. He obtained a PhD degree in Operations Management from Stern School of Business at New York University in 2007, and he also holds master's and bachelor's degrees of Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University.

Research Affiliate Kohei Kawaguchi (Sunada) Assistant Professor, Department of Economics
Assistant Professor, Big Data Institute Kohei Kawaguchi is an assistant professor of Economics and Big Data Institute at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he taught courses on industrial organization and microeconomics since 2017. He received his PhD in Economics from LSE. His research lies on empirical industrial organization and quantitative marketing. His recent empirical work includes antitrust economics such as the merger analysis of zero-price product and business economics such as the impact of introducing algorithm-based decisions in a retail business.

Publications Corporate Disclosure as a Tacit Coordination Mechanism: Evidence from Cartel Enforcement Regulations By Alminas Žaldokas (on leave), Thomas Bourveau, Guoman She