Tsun Se Cheong

• PhD (Economics), MAF, MIR, BEng(Hons)
• Professor (Associate) at Hang Seng University of Hong Kong

Utilizing an advanced machine learning algorithm, particularly the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) framework, this study reveals a significant nonlinear and even cyclical relationship between public concern about environmental issues and the ESG performance of Chinese A-share listed companies, covering the period from 2004 to 2020. The findings hig...

This paper is the first to examine the distribution dynamics of vegetation coverage using a dataset of 366 China’s prefecture and above (PAA) cities from 2001 to 2020. The results from the continuous state space approach demonstrate a clear pattern of convergence in China’s vegetation coverage in the long run, proving the effectiveness of governmen...

This paper studies the impact of digital financial inclusion on China's carbon emissions and aims to inform evidence-based policies using an artificial neural networks approach. We show that digital financial inclusion reduces CO2 emissions per capita, particularly in moderately industrialized, technologically underdeveloped, and less urbanized cit...

This paper applies the distribution dynamics analysis (DDA) technique in business ethics research using proprietary data measuring the general public’s perception of business ethics levels in 206 major companies operating in Hong Kong. The data is comprehensive and longitudinal, consisting of 10,773 interviews collected between 2012 and 2016, trans...

This paper applies an advanced machine learning algorithm, the Artificial Neural Network (ANN), to examine both linear and nonlinear effects between firm-level characteristics and ESG performance of all firms listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) with ESG scores during 2019-2021. To mitigate the problem of data-specific findings due to rati...

China has witnessed unprecedented economic growth and urbanisation while soaring housing prices and crime rates have become a burning issue. However, the research on the effect of Chinese housing prices on crime remains limited and ignores the endogeneity problem. This study covers all Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2015. By employing the two-step...

Our study employs the distribution dynamics approach to uncover transition probabilities and the long-term evolution of relative per capita carbon emissions (REPC) and relative carbon intensity (REPGDP) across 204 countries. We split the period of analysis into pre-crisis (2000-2007), and post-crisis (2007-2016) and divided countries into four inco...

We examined distribution dynamics and the long-run evolution of cross-country relative per capita carbon emissions (REPC) and intensity (RCI) vis-à-vis countries' two factors: industrial and services sectors' output. Unlike other researchers, we employed two visual tools of the distribution dynamics approach and used a panel of 217 countries. We ra...

The uneven distribution of FDI contributes to inequality in economic development. Most studies on FDI in China use provincial data and parametric tools of analysis while delivering mixed findings regarding FDI's distribution and free trade zones (FTZs) attractiveness. We investigate the convergence and transitional dynamics of relative FDI (RFDI) i...

Information and communication technology (ICT) has great potential to propel economic development toward a low-carbon direction. This study aims to investigate the effect of ICT development on total-factor carbon emission efficiency (TFCEE), as well as its public health co-benefits. We use dynamic (threshold) models and a panel of 30 Chinese provin...

This paper introduces a new trading strategy in investment: including the asset (Asset A) with the highest mean, the asset (Asset B) that stochastically dominates many other assets, and the asset (Asset C) with the smallest standard deviation in their portfolio to form portfolios in the efficient frontier for emerging and developed markets that cou...

Converging corporate carbon performance (CCP) to a higher level is necessary to achieve the global goal of controlling temperature rise. However, it remains uncertain whether all international firms endeavour to improve CCP. Using a panel of 19,913 public companies from 76 countries during the 2010–2019 period and two visual tools of the distributi...

Businesses have been exposed to various challenges during the global pandemic. Unfortunately, the financially vulnerable groups in society are disproportionately affected by such a difficult time. Therefore, it is important for businesses to recognise this when creating new business models for sustainable corporate management. This paper attempts t...

Urbanisation and agriculture have been commonly used in the studies of carbon emissions. However, the issue of convergence of carbon emissions and intensity across countries with different urbanisation and agrarian structures has been under-researched. Unlike previous studies, we examine whether the urbanisation level and the agrarian orientation d...

The outbreak of coronavirus pandemic in late 2019 posted unprecedented social-economic challenges and disruptions to societies and individuals. The “new-normal” styles of living and working could intertwined with other determinants complicating the investigation of individual’s financial vulnerability. The purpose of this paper is to conduct litera...

Many scholars have argued that the increased disparity in agricultural development among countries is the crux of the regional inequality problem and exerts adverse effects on individuals’ well-being. This study thus aims to examine the distribution dynamics of global agricultural development. Specifically, it examines whether the disparity in agri...

This study investigates the relationship between economic growth and inequality by employing the artificial neural network approach. There are many important findings. First, this work reveals the underlying functional form of economic growth and inequality by using three‐dimensional diagrams. Second, the findings show that there was an inverted‐U...

The last quarter of the 20th century was a period of sustained economic growth across many countries. Countries’ institutional arrangements have been commonly employed as factors in the convergence studies of economic growth and income levels. However, the issue of whether institutions themselves converge has been under-researched. Using the nonpar...

This paper examines the future dynamics of the relative housing price-to-income ratio (RHPIR) in China. We find that the convergence in RHPIR will be more congregated in the non-center cities of city clusters, the cities from the eastern region, with a net outflow of population, and low economic policy uncertainty (EPU). The convergence clubs will...

Given that there is no recent research on decomposition for global inequality, the aim of this study is to fill the gap in the literature by investigating global inequality with decomposition technique. The data of this study were compiled from the World Bank and decomposition by subgroups was conducted to evaluate the driving forces behind the evo...

Employing distribution dynamics analysis, we examine the future spatial dynamics and convergence of the relative house-price-to-income ratio (RHPIR) across 171 major Chinese cities during the 2002-2016 period. We find that the convergence occurs at a slow pace and is heterogeneous across cities and periods. From the policymakers' perspective, our f...

The aim of this study is to examine the evolution of inequality by focusing on the impacts of the economic structure. The technique of decomposition by income sources is employed to evaluate the contribution of the three major sectors, namely the agricultural, industrial, and service sectors to overall inequality. The data cover almost all the coun...

Empirical studies suggest that globalization (FDI and international trade) has been greatly affected by the COVID-19 and related anti-pandemic measures imposed by governments worldwide. This paper investigates the impact of globalization on intra-provincial income inequality in China and the data is based on the county level. The findings reveal th...

Empirical studies suggest that globalization (FDI and international trade) has been greatly affected by the COVID-19 and related anti-pandemic measures imposed by governments worldwide. This paper investigates the impact of globalization on intra-provincial income inequality in China and the data is based on the county level. The findings reveal th...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a huge impact on global service sector. In the pandemic background, to understand the disparity in service sector outputs at the global level is crucial for assessing the effectiveness of development policies in different countries. This study investigate the global service sector and it aims to investigate the tran...

The spread of COVID-19 has significantly dampened global economic activity and has also wreaked havoc on the industrial sector. Understanding the disparity and convergence of global industrial outputs is important in assessing the effectiveness of concurrent development policies. This study investigates the spatial distribution of global industrial...

The impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on the environment is an important but controversial topic. But assessing it faces a significant challenge for separating its policy impact from the overall effect of economic development that will also have environmental impacts. This paper attempts to provide an evolutionary and counterfactual base...

Economic shocks from COVID-19, coupled with ongoing US-China tensions, have raised debates around supply chain (or global value chain) organisation, with China at the centre of the storm. However, quantitative studies that consider the global and economy-wide impacts of rerouting supply chains are limited. This study examines the economic and emiss...

Increasing household energy consumption, mainly due to consumption upgrading, will create tough challenges for China if that country is to achieve peak carbon emissions in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060. However, this critical issue has not been explored comprehensively in the literature. Using China Family Panel Studies data and the distributi...

In this study, we compare the adjustments of credit ratings by an investor-paid credit rating agency (CRA), represented by Egan-Jones Ratings Company, and an issuer-paid CRA, represented by Moody’s Investors Service, vis-à-vis conflict of interest and reputation. A novel distribution dynamics approach is employed to compute the probability distribu...

This paper studies the distribution dynamics of China's household consumption upgrading by using household survey data. The findings show that the consumption upgrading index is between 0.75 and 0.95 for most of the households. The convergence value of the rural households is much higher than their urban counterparts, and the rural-urban gap can be...

This study investigates the impact of COVID-19 and social distancing policies on regional income inequality. We base our study on a sample of 295 prefecture (and above) cities in 31 provinces in China. A distribution dynamics approach is employed to reveal the trend and movement of disposable income per capita in each city before the COVID-19 pande...

Global efforts in limiting coal consumption will be undermined if new major coal users emerge; however, very few studies have been conducted on the emergence of prospective coal users. The objective of this paper is thus to investigate how likely some developing countries will emerge to be significant coal users. The distribution dynamics approach...

This paper examines income convergence by using a continuous distribution dynamics approach which takes both population and economic size into consideration. The study is based on a panel dataset of 31 Chinese provinces from 1952 to 2013. The impacts of geographical location, capital accumulation, trade openness and industrial structure are also ev...

Since household carbon emissions (HCEs) have become a new growing source and a significant contributor to global emissions, the reduction of HCEs is crucial. To formulate targeted and effective emission mitigation policies, we need to fully understand the characteristics of the distribution and evolution of per capita HCEs and their urban-rural and...

The identification of factors that influence household carbon emissions (HCEs)—a key driver of the national emissions, is an important step in achieving more accurate predictions, as well as better interpretation and more effective policy intervention. In this paper, based on survey data, we first calculated the direct, indirect, and total HCEs per...

Whether there will be a long-run equilibrium (steady state) in energy demand per capita is a critical question for energy and environmental policy makers. While many studies have been done on energy production and energy consumption, little attention has been paid to whether disparities in relative household energy consumption (RHEC) converge, and...

There has been a general consensus that greenhouse gas emission is closely related with energy consumption. A systematic and complete investigation of the state and evolution of the energy consumption structure (ECS) of global countries is of great importance to figure out the different positions, responsibilities and missions of each country in th...

Based on the methods of distribution dynamics analysis, this study estimates the regional housing price disparity across China’s eastern, central and western regions. Analysis from decomposition of housing price growth rate by subgroup indicates that the disparity is largely due to intra-regional rather than inter-regional differences. Eastern regi...

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of intercountry inequality and convergence in Asia by using a combined approach that is based on decomposition techniques and transitional dynamics analysis. The research is divided into three stages. First, decomposition by regional subgroups is conducted to estimate the contributions of the interregion...

This paper investigates the impacts of financial development, urbanization, and globalization on income inequality in China by applying a regression-based inequality decomposition approach to panel data on Chinese provinces. Provincial data on urbanization and globalization are combined with new data collected from a unique database of financial de...

This study aims to investigate the sources of income inequality in rural China. The regression-based decomposition approach is employed to measure the relative contribution of each determinant to net income of rural residents in China. The analysis is based on a unique database of financial development compiled at the county level. This study contr...

The objective of this paper is to investigate the impacts of urbanization on influencing the rural–urban consumption disparity in China, a research gap which has not been bridged so far. Adopting a provincial dataset from 1997 to 2014, a generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator is employed to reveal the impact of urbanization on the ratio of p...

This paper examines the pattern and evolution trend of foreign investment in China through combining decomposition analysis and framework of transitional dynamics. It is recognized that inter-regional disparity contributes the most to China’s disparity in foreign investment. Stochastic kernel analyses are then performed for the country and the econ...

This paper examines the dynamic behaviour of energy intensity across Chinese cities. It employs a dynamic distribution approach which takes economic size into consideration. The results support the existence of convergence in terms of energy intensity among Chinese cities during the sample period. However, bimodality is the dominant characteristic...

One critical factor that affects China's achievement of its peak emission by 2030 is total electricity demand. The aim of this study is to examine regional disparity in electricity consumption in China. The analysis is based on a panel database which is compiled at the provincial level. A distributional dynamics approach is then employed to reveal...

Purpose The main purpose of this paper is to explore the transitional dynamics of housing affordability indicators of major cities in three developed countries: the USA, Canada and Australia, in the period after the global financial crisis. As the global housing markets are more interconnected today, it is essential to investigate the demographic m...

China's residential housing market has been largely influenced by the policy initiatives of the central government. This study examines how the implementation and removal of home purchase restrictions has affected housing price changes in major cities. Based on the dataset of 70 large- and medium- sized cities between 2014 and 2015, the price evolu...

Faculty Development Scheme, Research Grants Council of Hong Kong

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study convergence and income mobility of China’s rural households. Design/methodology/approach The data of rural household income per capita are employed to compute the transitional dynamics in the rural sector. The analyses are conducted at two spatial levels, namely, the national and provincial levels. Erg...

The aim of this paper is to examine the transitional dynamics of carbon dioxide emission in China by using a prefecture-level database. Convergence analysis is conducted and mobility probability plots (MPPs) are employed to examine the distribution dynamics of 286 cities from 2002 to 2011. The empirical investigation is conducted in three steps. In...

This paper investigates the spatial dynamics of per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in China. The analyses are conducted by employing a continuous dynamic distribution approach and panel data of 286 cities at the prefecture and above-prefecture level. The results show that per capita CO2 emissions tend to converge during the sample period of...

This paper examines the impact of intra-provincial regional inequality on crime rates in China. The results suggest that the western theories of crime can be applied equally to China. The crime rate is found to be positively correlated with intra-provincial regional inequality, but negatively correlated with the level of education. In addition, it...

China has achieved unprecedented success in economic growth since the initiation of economic reforms. The high growth could partly be attributed to the successes in structural transformation of the economy and industrial upgrading of the manufacturing sector towards high value-added products. However, regional inequality in China has increased cons...

Many scholars have argued that the huge increase in regional inequality in China can be attributed greatly to the disparity in industrialization. This paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the transitional dynamics of industrial output by employing a new framework of distribution dynamics analysis, namely the Mobili...

Most of the earlier studies on the convergence of income in China are based on provincial level data with a few papers focusing on intra-provincial units’ transitional dynamics. The objective of this study is to fill the void in the literature by using county-level data which cover 1485 counties and county-level cities in 22 provinces for the perio...

This paper examines the impacts of globalization on intra-provincial inequality in China. The empirical analysis is based on a dataset of Chinese counties and county-level cities. It is found that foreign direct investment (FDI) and intra-provincial regional inequality are negatively correlated, whereas the relationship between international trade...

This study applies a decomposition technique to analyze China's regional inequality using county-level data. It is shown that inter-provincial inequality increased significantly during 1997-2007. It is also shown that, although inter-county-level-unit inequality within all the provinces remained more or less the same during the period considered, i...