CUHK Business School Research Honoured the IBR Best Journal Paper of the Year 2020

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School’s research titled “Does national sentiment affect foreign direct investment, and if so, how? Additional evidence” won the International Business Review (IBR) Best Journal Paper of the Year 2020 award.

Published in IBR, one of the most influential journals in international business, the research was coauthored by Shige Makino, Professor of Department of Management at CUHK Business School, Prof. Megan Li from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Prof. Chunyan Jiang from Nanjing University Business School. Prof. Li and Prof. Jiang received their PhD in Management from CUHK Business School in 2015 and 2006 respectively, and they were also students of Prof. Makino before.

Previous studies of foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions typically assume that decision makers and stakeholders act rationally. Drawing on studies conducted at the individual level, this award-winning study focuses instead on affect and explores theoretically and empirically how national sentiment influences FDI decisions. In particular, the research develops a typology for understanding national sentiment along two axes – positive versus negative and accumulated versus transient – and investigate their separate influences on FDI. The results indicate that negative sentiment has a greater influence on FDI than positive sentiment and that accumulated sentiment has a greater influence than transient sentiment.


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IBR, the European International Business Academy‘s associated journal, published by Elsevier, sponsors the IBR Best Journal Paper of the Year Award and accompanying money prize for the best IBR article (published in the previous year’s volume) in terms of enhancing the field of International Business research in the future.

To find out more about the research, please visit the School’s China Business Knowledge (CBK) where you can find the feature article entitled “Foreign Investments – A Matter of Head or Heart?” which was contributed by Prof. Li.