A Quantitative Study of Hong Kong's Fiscal Policy

Given the adoption of the linked exchange rate since October 1983, fiscal policy becomes the only measurement for stabilizing the Hong Kong economy. This paper attempts to establish a framework for evaluating the fiscal effect to prevent the abuse of fiscal measures. The empirical study of Jha et al. (2010) revealed the significant negative impact of fiscal effect in Hong Kong, which violates the classical view of fiscal policy. A similar result has been found by adopting another structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model proposed by Ravn et al. (2007). An omission of control variables in the quantitative model is possible. The MSCI AC (All countries) Pacific Index has been introduced as an international block in the SVAR model proposed by Ravn et al. (2007). The fiscal effect becomes positive and standardizes with the previous fiscal studies. The replacement of investment variable in the modified model suggests that positive fiscal innovation does not encounter with the crowding out effect on investment. The estimations for the decomposition policy expenditures indicate that compositional effect exists, and it undermines the fiscal multiplier. The estimations also reveal that the innovation in recurrent expenditure contributes mainly to the fiscal effect. With the persistence and significant impact on output, concentrating on infrastructure expenditure is the recommendation on Hong Kong fiscal policy to maximize the expansionary effect in the short run.