In 2007, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA) required pharmaceutical companies to publicly disclose the entire process of their clinical trials, including trial design, sample size, progress milestones, and final results, covering both successes and failures. This reform made the previously opaque FDA process more transparent, providing peers with unprecedented sources of information....

What drives economic growth during credit expansions — households or firms?The paper “Quantifying the Macroeconomic Impact of Credit Expansions,” co-authored by PHBS Assistant Professor Yicheng Wang, examines this question using evidence from U.S. bank deregulation across states in the 1980s, which lowered borrowing costs and triggered credit expansion.The findings show that the firm channel accounts ...

How AI Could End the Division of Labor and Launch an End-to-End Organizational Revolution For more than two centuries since Adam Smith’s famous pin factory example, the business world has operated under a simple principle: efficiency comes from division of labor. The logic seemed unassailable. Because human cognitive capacity is limited, complex commercial tasks must be broken down into smaller components,...

When Silence Feels Luxurious.Rethinking “Fast Replies” in Luxury E-commerce.In an age where instant replies have become a customer expectation, could a touch of waiting actually make a brand feel more refined?Assistant Professor Soojin Roh of Peking University HSBC Business School (PHBS) examines this question in her recent paper, “The Devil Replies Slowly: How the Response Speed of Online Luxury ...

The Digital Heartbeat of EmotionIn the digital age, even the smallest symbols can shape how people connect. A single emoji can alter how audiences interpret sincerity and professionalism. Assistant Professor Soojin Roh of Peking University HSBC Business School (PHBS) explores how subtle emotional cues in online communication influence public trust and perception across cultures.As digital communication ...

This paper quantitatively examines the marginal value of corporate cash holdings (MVC)—that is, the change in shareholder value resulting from an additional unit of cash. In a frictionless market, the marginal value of one unit of cash equals one. However, in reality, various frictions and constraints can cause MVC to deviate from this benchmark. For instance, financing constraints may restrict investment ...

Traditional matching theory—applied in contexts such as college admissions, kidney exchange, and labor markets—assumes individuals make rational, preference-based choices.

This paper examines the design of rosters used to implement affirmative action in India’s public institutions.

This paper ​explores the impact of the “Verified Purchase” (VR) label on online review systems, with a focus on how platform-level policy changes influence both reviewer behavior and reader perception.

The PHBS Think Tank (北大汇丰智库) has released its latest economic report, offering an in-depth look at China’s macroeconomic performance in the first quarter of 2025. The findings point to a “strong start” for the year with Q1 GDP growth projected at 5.2%, driven by a stabilizing real estate sector, resilient momentum in emerging industries and a large scale of trade surplus. However, weak consumption ...