As the Hong Kong economy became increasingly integrated with that of Mainland China, it has benefited tremendously from the strong performance of the Mainland economy. At the same time, skilful macroeconomic management and sustained structural reforms on the Mainland have engendered a virtuous...

The HKMA has undertaken to compile and publish a new data series on the composite interest rate to improve interest rate risk management of the banking sector. The new series is being introduced following research which concluded that a composite interest rate reflecting movements in various...

The paper explores what information on cross-border fund flows between Hong Kong and the Mainland can be extracted from existing statistics on banking transactions. As the stock of gross liabilities has been larger than claims since mid-1999, the Mainland remains a net supplier of funds (in...

This paper revisits the relationship among consumption, income and wealth using Hong Kong data. We find that the permanent income hypothesis is weakly supported by Hong Kong¡¦s consumption data prior to 1997, but it is not supported for the sample period after 1997 and the whole sample period...

Hong Kong¡¯s Linked Exchange Rate system (LERS) has been in operation for 25 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 credibility...

This paper aims to provide an analytical framework for an educated guess of the potential volume of outward portfolio investment from Mainland China and how large a share Hong Kong could capture, should the Mainland's capital account be as open as any other developed economies. Based on our...

Property prices in Hong Kong increased markedly in late 2007 and early 2008, raising concerns about the risk of overheating in the property market. In this paper, we use co-integration analysis to analyze the short- and long-run determinants of property prices in Hong Kong. We find that the...

Market sentiment is increasingly seen as a key factor driving the movement of asset prices. This paper develops two indicators to measure investors' attitude towards risk in the Hong Kong stock market: a) a risk appetite index and b) an investment sentiment index. We find that although the risk...

This paper estimates that about 50 ¡V 70% of the Hong Kong-dollar currency in circulation (equivalent to about $100 ¡V 140 billion), mostly in the form of high-denomination banknotes, was being circulated outside Hong Kong at the end of 2009. The large external circulation was mainly a result...

Sharp increase in house prices combined with the extraordinary lending growth in Mainland China during 2009 has led to concerns of an emerging real estate bubble. We find that, for China as a whole, the current levels of house prices do not seem significantly higher than would be justified by...