Hong Kong – Shenzhen Finance Research Center

The Hong Kong-Shenzhen Finance Research Center is co-founded by Shenzhen Finance Institute (SFI), CUHK-Shenzhen and The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School. It is the only cross-border research unit in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area that focuses on cutting-edge finance research. This Centre will support top researchers in the Greater Bay Area to conduct closer collaboration to tackle challenging questions ranging from FinTech, financial innovation to financial policy-making.

The goal of developing the Greater Bay Area is ambitious – it will combine Hong Kong, Macao and major cities in Guangdong (e.g. Shenzhen), to create a region with the economic heft comparable to Greater San Francisco, New York or Tokyo Bay Areas. While the Greater Bay Area initiative is a great opportunity, it also presents many challenges due to the fact that Hong Kong, Macao and cities in the Chinese mainland have different social, political, legal and financial systems. These issues need to be addressed by future research, so that relevant infrastructure, policies and regulations can be put into place to ensure the frictionless flow of products, labour, information and capital in this region. In view of these challenges, our Centre – the first research centre of this nature in the world – was established to act as a bridge between academics, industries and institutions, and to provide a collaborative space for top researchers, major financial market players and regulators to conduct and apply cutting-edge finance research. Through inviting leading scholars, hosting international conferences, recruiting top researchers, data scientists and PhD students, as well as interacting with other research centres within SFI, CUHK-Shenzhen, including the Center for FinTech and Social Finance and the Center for Economic Data Research, our Centre will generate synergies between the two CUHK campuses and facilitate collaborations between CUHK and other research institutes in China and around the world. In addition, our Centre will provide an interdisciplinary platform for collaborations among researchers with different backgrounds – economics, finance, information science, marketing and operation management – who share the same goal. These collaborations will generate comprehensive datasets, train academic and industry talents, support rigorous research, and ultimately contribute to intellectual exchanges and financial activities in the Greater Bay Area.