Advanced statistical techniques are used to analyze Hong Kong output dynamics. Hong Kong, Japan and the U.S. are found to share some common long-term and short-term cyclical variations. While the Hong Kong economy is susceptible to external shocks and Granger-caused by the other two economies,...

The study assesses the level of integration among the three Greater China economies (namely China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) and examines the suitability of a Greater China currency union. Currently, the three economies have extensive trade and investment linkages. Our analyses show that these...

Immigration may impact income distribution both by affecting the skill composition of a country's residents, and, by changing relative factor supplies, its relative factor prices. We provide some background evidence on compositional factors but focus primarily on factor prices. We first consider...

The status of real and financial integration of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan is investigated using monthly data on one-month interbank rates, exchange rates, and prices. Specifically, the degree of integration is assessed based on the empirical validity of real interest parity, uncovered...

Standard economic models predict that the choice of an exchange rate regime has important implications for the interdependency of national monetary policies, which is sometimes measured by the degree of inflation transmission across borders. In this paper, we examine how inflation rates in two...

Conventional wisdom suggests that marginal damages from particulate matter pollution are high in less-developed countries because they are highly polluted. Using administrative data on the universe of births and deaths, we explore birthweight and mortality effects of gestational particulate...

We evaluate the 1968 H3N2 Flu pandemic’s economic cost in a cross-section of 52 countries. Using excess mortality rates as a proxy for the country-specific severity of the pandemic, we find that the average mortality rate (0.0062% per pandemic wave) was associated with declines in consumption...

During Europe's sovereign-debt crisis, interest rate spreads have been highly correlated with the share of multilateral loans that were considered senior to private markets. As both variables are potentially endogenous, we follow two different approaches to analyze the direction of causality....

There has been much interest in the relationship between the price of crude oil, the value of the U.S. dollar, and the U.S. interest rate since the 1980s. For example, the sustained surge in the real price of oil in the 2000s is often attributed to the declining real value of the U.S. dollar as...

Pensions may be provided for in a modern society by a mix of several methods, namely by voluntary individual savings, mandatory fully-funded occupational pension systems, mandatory social security financed by pay-as-you-go, and old-fashioned hoarding in cash. Here, we call the specific mixture...