Songfa Zhong

Prof. Songfa Zhong is a Professor of Economics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and National University of Singapore (on leave 2023-2024). His research focuses on behavioral economics, experimental economics, genoeconomics, and neuroeconomics. He holds a PhD from HKUST and a BA from Peking University. His work explores decision-making under uncertainty, gender differences in competitiveness, and the genetic and neural bases of preferences.

Research Interests:

• Behavioral economics: Moral behavior in uncertain environments, source preference, and intertemporal choice
• Experimental economics: Design of choice-list elicitation, lab-in-the-field experiments
• Genoeconomics: Genetic influences on risk-taking, familiarity bias, and social preferences
• Neuroeconomics: Brain mechanisms linking decision-making to stress, amygdala activation, and biomarkers

Key Contributions: Recent work includes studies on GPT's economic rationality, physician decision path dependency, and the role of visceral influences in gender competitiveness gaps. His experiments often combine behavioral data with genetic and neuroimaging techniques.

Advising & Grants: Supervised numerous lab experiments with funding from Singapore Ministry of Education (e.g., R-122-000-325-115). Collaborates internationally on projects like China's Gaokao gender analysis and Olympic athlete stress studies.

Labs/Teams: Leads interdisciplinary teams analyzing decision-making at the intersection of economics, neuroscience, and genetics. Active in HKUST's behavioral economics research networks.