This paper concerns the dynamic characteristics of incompressible laminar flow hydro-static bearings. An improved method based on the mathematical perturbation technique for calcu-lating the stiffness and damping coefficients of hydrostatic bearings is presented; it raises the calculation efficiency by uncoupling the recess flow continuity equations from the solving of the Reynolds equation. The dynamic coefficients of a water-lubricated four-recess hydrostatic bearing are calculated with both the improved method and the conventional method. The comparisons between these two methods validate the effectiveness and correctness of the improved method. Fur-thermore, the dynamic response and stability characteristics of a rotor supported by the hydrostatic bearing are calculated and compared with experimental results. First, the dynamic responses calcu-lated with the linear and nonlinear bearing dynamic coefficients models show that the linear model is inaccurate if the rotor whirls in a large eccentricity ratio range, owing to the nonlinearity of stiff-ness and damping. Second, according to the numerical and experimental results, the nonlinearity of bearing stiffness and damping coefficients could induce double rotational frequency component in the unbalance response frequency spectrum. Finally, the numerical results indicate that the stability threshold speed of the bearing increases with eccentricity ratio. The improved method proposed can be used to evaluate the dynamic performance of hydrostatic bearings efficiently, and the bearing characteristics presented could contribute to a better understanding of the performance of water-lubricated hydrostatic bearings.