Interest rate deregulation and banks’ off-balance-sheet activities: a Hong Kong perspective

Through the interest rate deregulation and banks’ off-balance-sheet activities (OBSAs) in Hong Kong, this study investigates the debate over the impact of banking deregulation on banks’ risk-taking behaviour. On the one hand, the Arrow effect implies that increased competition caused by the interest rate deregulation motivates Hong Kong banks to speed up their development of OBSAs as an additional but riskier income source. On the other hand, the Schumpeterian effect implies that the deregulation may reduce the banks’ financial capability in developing new products and thus downscale their OBSA adoption. Our findings show that, while the negative scale effect is statistically insignificant, the interest rate deregulation has a positive and significant impact on the adoption rate for all OBSA categories. We therefore conclude that the interest rate deregulation unambiguously leads to riskier bank behaviour in terms of higher OBSA adoption.     

Dying for Money

A bstract . A major cause of spiralling health-care cost is aggressive treatment of major illnesses by health-care providers The insured patient also demands such an expensive course of action because he pays only a small portion of the cost and is not given a more attractive alternative. If the patient is offered compensation to give up his de facto right to aggressive treatment, insurance premium can be reduced. Physician-assisted death with benefit conversion is discussed as a means for such an exchange.     

Who pays for fiscal expansion? Distributional effects of fiscal spending in a small open economy with foreign capital

Utilizing a static two-sector general equilibrium model, the distributional implications of fiscal spending in a small open economy are studied. In the presence of foreign capital, two “perverse” effects of fiscal expansion are shown to be possible in stable equilibrium: 1) fiscal expansion may worsen the fiscal authority's welfare even if more resources are allocated for their consumption; 2) fiscal expansion may improve the private agent's welfare even if the agent directly pays for the expansion. We discussed the conditions under which these results can happen.     

Capital Asset Pricing Model and Stochastic Volatility: A Case Study of India

The existing literature demonstrates that under a general equilibrium model, the performance of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) can be improved significantly by using conditional consumption and market return volatilities as factors. This article tests the validity of these factors explaining stock return differences using a less developed country (India) as a case study. While the earlier studies used panel data to test CAPM, we use portfolios sorted by size and book-to-market equity (BE/ME) ratio. We found that conditional volatility has a limited effect on firms with large capitalization but a significant impact on small-growth and small-value firms.     

REIT Stock Market Volatility and Expected Returns

We study the relation between REIT stock volatility and future returns, focusing particularly on the financial crisis period of 2007–2009. There is ongoing debate about whether stock volatility can forecast future returns. Our findings suggest that REIT‐implied volatility is negatively related to contemporaneous stock returns; there is a significant positive relationship between REIT implied volatility and future stock volatility; and there is a significant negative relation between REIT implied volatility and future stock returns. Lastly, we develop trading rules based on REIT implied volatility to test whether these relationships are exploitable. The result suggests a potentially profitable trading strategy.     

R&D, knowledge spillovers and stock volatility

Firms improve their know‐how not only by innovations (producing new knowledge), but also by knowledge spillovers (learning from others). The objective of this study is to test for two major hypotheses developed from a theoretical model explaining the relationship between R&D, knowledge spillovers and stock volatility. Analytically, the model suggests that asymmetric information caused by R&D activities with uncertain future output increases stock volatility, even though dividends and consumptions remain unchanged. However, interfirm knowledge spillovers have a negative impact on stock volatility by reducing the degree of asymmetric information. Both hypotheses are supported by empirical evidence from this study.     

Maintaining competitiveness of aviation hub: Empirical evidence of visitors to China via Hong Kong by air transport

Prior studies have not extensively researched and explored the key determinants (aviation and tourism attributes) that could affect Hong Kong’s competitiveness as a transit hub for international visitors using Hong Kong as a stopover to Chinese cities when travelling by air. This study adds to that knowledge to empirically investigate Hong Kong’s eight major tourist source markets (Germany, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the UK, and the US), and also provides an insight to policy-makers in Hong Kong to help them understand the factors that influence Hong Kong’s aviation hub competitiveness and tourism development. The findings of the study suggest that increased air transport capacity from foreign countries and Hong Kong to China, trade volumes between China and its trading partners, air transport costs, and the global financial crisis are the key factors affecting the number of visitors to China by air passing through Hong Kong as their preferred stopover. The policy implications of the findings are discussed.