Ranking as a top global risk in 2024, misinformation poses severe economic threat. It distorts judgments, leading to resource misallocation and immense economic costs. Moreover, it impacts everyone, regardless of their educational background.

Intensifying extreme weather driven by global warming has severe socioeconomic impacts. In March 2024, the U.S. implemented nationwide climate disclosure rules for listed firms and in 2023 Hong Kong also strengthened oversight for transparency. While disclosures offer companies long-term benefits like reputational gains and risk mitigation, they incur costs and data leak risks. As regulations evolve, investors should integrate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, cost-control strategies for sustainable returns.

When economists conduct research on certain topics, they often face challenges in collecting data from real-life situations, that meet the ideal conditions of a randomised controlled experiment. However, if randomised controlled groups exist in real-world scenarios, they would present valuable opportunities for study. Many hypotheses, such as the idea that intellectual property laws boost the opera industry can be proved in such analysis.

The 13th Ministerial Conference of the WTO concluded in UAE last week. Although it received significant attention, the results were disappointing. In fact, since the financial crisis of 2008, the global trade growth has slowed down, and the outlook is gloomy.

Developing Headquarters Economy brings in new industries and high value-added economic activities, along with diverse talent and investments. Hong Kong has a robust legal system and business environment, and it serves as an important gateway for China, a market with a population of 1.4 billion, to access the global market. However, there are only 1,336 corporate headquarters, which is just 30% of Singapore’s figure.

The scale of sustainable investing has grown rapidly, with total assets reaching US$3 trillion in 2023, demonstrating investors’ increased awareness of sustainability’s importance. While sustainable funds outperformed traditional funds overall in 2022, performance varied across asset classes.

Hong Kong has been struggling with a surge in subdivided homes, leading to cramped and inhumane living conditions for its residents. While the government has proposed solutions like the Light Public Housing program, their implementation will be both time-consuming and expensive, resulting in long waiting times for public housing.

The euro, introduced in 1999, is celebrating its 25th anniversary after gradually replacing the currencies of 20 countries and becoming widely used by European citizens. The introduction of the euro was a significant milestone in the international monetary system and aimed to promote European economic cooperation, unity, and strength. However, critics raised concerns about the decision-making process of the ECB and its potential to cause discord among member states.