EM Asia has seen a transformation of its monetary policy environment over the past 2 decades. By far, the most relevant change has been the maturing of its financial systems and the growing relevance of the global financial cycle: financial inclusion has spread, financial markets have deepened...

Hong Kong’s Linked Exchange Rate System (LERS) has been in operation for twenty-five years during which time many other fixed exchange rate systems have succumbed to shocks and/or speculative attacks. This fact alone suggests that the LERS is a robust system which enjoys a large measure of...

Countries in Eastern and Central Europe that are likely to join the European Union will eventually also join the European Monetary Union. The process of accession will entail a transition period at the end of which it is certain that the domestic currency will be replaced by the Euro. This paper...

This paper examines the inflation experience of seven small economies in East Asia: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. It documents common elements in the inflation processes across countries that are not only due to the reaction of the countries to the...

This paper argues that inflation targeting should not be defined too narrowly. The principal objective of a sound monetary policy, namely to provide a credible nominal anchor for the economy, can be achieved with a variety of institutional structures and operational frameworks. It is essential,...

This paper uses a semi-structural vector autoregression approach to estimate the relative importance of domestic and foreign shocks as sources of macroeconomic fluctuations in Hong Kong since the adoption of the currency board. We find that external factors are clearly dominant in the medium to...