Dr. Richard Wong (AB, AM, PhD in Economics, Chicago) is Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Chair of Economics,and Philip Wong Kennedy Wong Professor in Political Economy at The University of Hong Kong, where he served also as Founding Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics (2000-2007) and Provost (2004-2010). He was a Visiting Scholar at Hoover Institution at Stanford University (1989), a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Economic Research at Tsinghua University (1996-), and Distinguished Fulbright Scholar (2011).
His research includes public housing, household economics, informal labor markets, and regional economic development in China. He has led pioneering efforts in studying regional economic development in the Pearl River Delta and Yangzi River Delta regions. His current research is on the political economy of laissez faire and housing and labormigration in Hong Kong. His earlier published books include The Fifth Dragon: Emergence of the Pearl River Delta (1995) (co-author), On Privatizing Public Housing (1998), and Retaking Economic Center Stage-Integration and Transformation of the Yangzi River Delta Economic Region, 2007. Recent books include Diversity and Occasional Anarchy: On Deep Economic and Social Contradictions in Hong Kong, The Chicago School of Economics –Markets and the Social Order (in Chinese), Hong Kong Land for Hong Kong People: Fixing the Failures of Our Housing Policy, and Fixing Inequality in Hong Kong.
He had served on a number of public bodies in Hong Kong, including the Economic Advisory, Exchange Fund Advisory Committee, Housing Authority, Hospital Authority, and the Chief Executive’s Commission on Innovation and Technology. He serves as an independent non-executive director of a number of companies, including Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation (2004-07) and The Link REIT (2007-17).
He was awarded the Silver Bauhinia Star in 1999 by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in recognition of his contributions to education, housing, and industry and technology development. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 2000.
He used to write a weekly political economy column for the South China Morning Post and Hong Kong Economic Journal and maintains a blog.