Hong Kong, Singapore and the East Asian Crisis: How Important were Trade Spillovers?

The literature on the East Asian crisis has concentrated almost exclusively on the five crisis-hit economies of Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines (Asia-5). Relatively scant attention has been paid to the "twin cities" of Hong Kong and Singapore, both of which also suffered from contagious fallout from the crisis despite being well acknowledged as having relatively sound financial and economic fundamentals. This paper examines the extent to which trade spillovers, both direct and indirect, have been important in transmitting the regional downturn from the Asia-5 economies to Hong Kong and Singapore.