The Executive Board of the IMF has concluded the consultation discussions with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR). Hong Kong SAR has rebounded from the global financial crisis, and growth should be at 53⁄4 percent this year. Unemployment has fallen to low levels, and real incomes have grown, supporting consumption. It is noted that growth has rebounded thanks to the authorities’ policy response, highly flexible labor and product markets, and favorable spillovers from Mainland China. The progress on increasing trade settlement and issuing financial instruments denominated in renminbi has accelerated.
This book with 24 essays will appeal to local and international readers interested in Hong Kong. The latter include the international financial and business community, researchers in Asian Studies, journalists and educated tourists. Published by City University of Hong Kong Press. 香港城市大學出版社出版。
Deflation can be costly and difficult to anticipate, and concerns of a generalized decline in prices in both industrial and emerging market economies have increased recently. This paper investigates the causes and consequences of deflation, the risk of deflation globally and in individual countries, and policy options. The authors discuss issues related to the measurement, determinants, and costs of deflation and examine previous episodes of deflation. They compute an index of deflation vulnerability, which they apply to the 35 largest industrial and emerging market economies. Finally, the paper offers several policy options for protecting against deflation and for coping with it should it strike.
13. Walking a Tight Rope: Hong Kong's Media Facing Political and Economic Challenges Since Sovereignty Transfer -- 14. Postcolonial Cultural Trends in Hong Kong: Imagining the Local, the National, and the Global -- 15. Conclusion: Crisis and Transformation in the Hong Kong SAR-Toward Soft Authoritarian Developmentalism? -- The Editors and Contributors -- Index
This paper investigates the synchronization of Hong Kong SAR’s economic growth with mainland China and the United States. This paper identifies trends of economic growth based on the permanent income hypothesis. Specifically, the paper confirms whether real consumption in Hong Kong SAR and mainland China satisfy the permanent income hypothesis, at least in a weak form. It then identifies the permanent and transitory components of income of each economy using a simple state-space model. It uses structural vector autoregression models to analyze how permanent and transitory shocks originating from mainland China and the United States affect the Hong Kong economy, and how such influences evolve over time. The paper’s main findings suggest that transitory shocks from the United States remain a major driving force behind Hong Kong SAR’s business cycle fluctuations. On the other hand, permanent shocks from mainland China have a larger impact on Hong Kong SAR’s trend growth.
Hong Kong SAR is now highly unusual as a large economy running a currency board system that pegs the Hong Kong Dollar to the US Dollar. This volume explores the origins and persistence of this system, presenting the viewpoint of several of the main protagonists in the operation of the currency board since 1983 as well as new research by academics.
With a range of case studies from Asia, this book sheds light on empirical realizations of marginality in a globalized context using first-hand original research. In the late 2000s, the financial crisis witnessed the fragility of high levels of market integration and the vulnerability of globalisation. Since then, the world seems to have entered an epoch of anxiety featuring populism with varying degrees of protectionism and nationalism. What is the nature of this populist mood as a backlash against globalisation? How do people feel about it and act upon it? Why should specific intellectual attention be paid to the increasingly marginalised by the recent macroscopic structural changes? These are the questions addressed by the contributors of this book, illustrated with specific cases from mainland China, Hong Kong and India, all of which have undergone substantial populist or nationalist movements since 2010. A valuable resource for sociologists looking to understand the impacts of globalization, especially those with a particular interest in Asia.
This book of case studies is a significant contribution to monetary macroeconomics in which country-specific experience and issues in inflation and monetary policy are reviewed and analysed in an historical context. In doing so, the key ideas and views
In the first half of 2003, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) struck China (including Hong Kong), causing panic and claiming many lives. The unknown nature of SARS at that time also jolted the economic growth of China and Hong Kong, disrupted the social life of their citizens and created much stress and strain for their political systems and governance. Like other major crises, the management of the SARS crisis provides a good opportunity to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the political systems in China and Hong Kong. From the outset, scholars at the East Asian Institute (EAI) followed closely the unfolding of the disease in China, particularly how each of the two societies coped with this random external shock. SARS may or may not recur in the near future, but the episode has offered a glimpse into the extent of resilience of the two societies, the quality of their political leadership, the effectiveness of their political and institutional mobilization, the crisis-management capability of their respective bureaucracies, and the viability of their governance systems. This volume is the result of an EAI workshop on “SARS in China: Crises and Responses”.This book has been selected for coverage in:• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings® (ISTP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings® (ISSHP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings (ISSHP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)• CC Proceedings — Biomedical, Biological & Agricultural Sciences