Prof Jacky So, dean of the University of Macau (UM) Faculty of Business Administration and director of UM’s Asia-Pacific Academy of Economics and Management, recently received the Education Leadership Award at the award ceremony of the Asia’s Best B-School Awards 2014 held in Singapore. Prof So is the first from Macao to receive this award.

Additionally, Prof So recently joined Department of Mathematics assistant professor Dr Liu Zhi’s research project entitled “Efficient Estimation of Volatility Matrix under the Presence of Infinite Variation Jumps with Applications”, as a co-principal investigator. The project was approved by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and was funded with a grant of RMB 260,000. Earlier he was appointed visiting scholar in the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Asia and Pacific Department for a period of three months. 

Co-organised by the World Education Congress and the CMO Asia, the Asia’s Best B-School Awards is an annual award presented to distinguished individuals from Asian countries and regions, including Singapore, India, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Recipients are selected through a rigorous selection process. For example, the selection committee for the Education Leadership Award not only evaluates the candidates’ achievements and contributions, but also takes into account comments from the candidates’ colleagues, students, old school mates, as well as experts in the same research fields.

Earlier Prof So was appointed visiting scholar in the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department for a period of three months. While he was at the IMF, Prof So conducted research on topics such as “Asymmetric International Currency Reserve Management and Financial Developments – Evidence from the Emerging Market Countries in Asia”, and “Regional Exchange Rate System in Asia – Lessons from the 1992/93 ERM Crisis”.

Prof So is a chair professor of finance at UM. He has conducted thorough research on “non-normal distribution” and “business cycle”. As early as ten years ago, Prof So published influential papers on the appreciation of the renminbi, which is now a red-hot topic. His expertise in non-normal stable Paretian distribution is very useful for finding solutions to control the “tail risk” to prevent countries from entering a recession similar to the Great Depression in the 1930s. The above-mentioned research project funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China is closely related to non-normal distribution and tail risk.


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