Forward exchange rates convey information about the risk premiums of the currency exposures of the investors. The extraction of these risk premiums provides market information for the expected future values of a currency, which may be useful for policymakers in their market surveillance and...

Taking large open positions in the Hang Seng Index (HSI) futures formed part of the strategy of speculators in the 1998 episode of "speculative attacks" on the Hong Kong dollar and stock markets. The open interest in the HSI futures market has risen in the past three years, at one point to a...

The earnings-price ratio (E/P ratio) of the Hang Seng Index (HSI) and the spreads between the E/P ratio and interest rates are widely used by market practitioners to forecast the stock market outlook. This paper studies their usefulness as indicators of future Hong Kong stock market conditions....

Hong Kong has seen strong growth in labour productivity since 2002. Sectoral breakdown shows that the advance in output per labour has been mainly supported by the expansion in financial and trade related activities attributable to the vibrant increase in offshore trade and exports of financial...

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...

The current financial crisis differs from most post-war recessions in that the balance sheets of both households and banks have been severely damaged, which could lead to structural changes in the behaviour of households. Therefore, it may exert some far-reaching effects on regional economies in...

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...