Using macro-societal accounting data: Some critical afterthoughts

There is a tendency among researchers working in the societal accounting field to focus almost exclusively on conceptual exploration, design and measurement. This article suggests that it may be desirable to venture beyond the strictly theoretical and methodological domain and work towards satisfying concrete user needs. Personal experience is adduced to show that the output of the societal accounting movement falls short of providing the informational basis for management and political decision-making. Some ideas are also put forward as to possible ways of reducing the gap between the researcher/analyst and users of societal accounting data.     

Alternative futures and foreign direct investment in China

Chinese history is littered with sharp policy swings, and the communist era, which has not yet fully drawn to a close, has witnessed a veritable embarrassment of riches. This has provided a fertile ground for researchers engaged in crystal ball gazing. Recently, momentum has accelerated on that front, a development apparently reflecting the increasingly fluid political‐economic conditions in the country. The scenarios generated can serve as an effective reference point in planning exercises, but there is scope for solidifying the conceptual architecture. The issue of rendering them highly relevant to foreign investors, presumably very important potential consumers of the product, should also be addressed.     

Perceptions of the political environment and top management orientations in Hong Kong public enterprises

Although the scope for unfettered private initiative in the Territory remains substantial, the degree of government economic intervention in Hong Kong is greater than is generally realised. Thus,inter alia and contrary to popular belief, public enterprise constitutes a noticeable segment of the local economy. In the present article, an attempt is made to draw some conclusions about this sector's characteristics on the basis of attitudinal data.Both authors are with the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong     

The epitaph for state socialism: Views of Bartlomiej Kaminski and of Peter Murrell

Review of (1) Bartlomiej Kaminski,The Collapse of State Socialism: The Case of Poland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. (2) Peter Murrell,The Nature of Socialist Economics:Lessons from Eastern European Foreign Trade. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.     

THE HONG KONG CURRENCY BOARD'S DEFENSE AGAINST FINANCIAL MARKET PRESSURE: A BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE

Exchange rate regimes do not operate in an institutional vacuum, even when the scope for exercising policy discretion is distinctly limited. The Hong Kong linked exchange rate system is no exception. An interesting feature of the institutional environment in this case, not highlighted previously, is the apparent divergence in the assumptions of policymakers and market players regarding the merits of this mechanism in particular and currency boards in general. The corollary is that the Hong Kong monetary authorities need to intensify their efforts to disseminate relevant information, focusing especially on targets in the financial sector.     

Household Production of Health Investment: Analysis and Applications

Michael Grossman's health investment model provides significant insights into allocations between both leisure and income and health and nonhealth goods. Our geometric extension (i) integrates labor-leisure choice with the consumer's production of both health and nonhealth goods and (ii) distinguishes between medical expenditures and healthcare investment. This provides a framework for examining the effects of changes in incomes and wages, alternative insurance arrangements (including managed care), travel times, waiting times, and schooling. Observed differences between the income elasticities for health goods and health investment can be resolved through relative resource intensities in the production of health and nonhealth goods.     

The Transfer of Property Rights from the Public to the Private Sector in Hong Kong: A Critical Assessment

Abstract

The privatization idea may have lost some of its luster in recent years, but it remains relevant in today's socio-economic environment and is pursued consistently in industrialized and industrializing countries alike. Hong Kong has followed the general pattern in a manner reflecting its particular circumstances and its institutional modus operandi. The underlying logic may not appear highly compelling, from a short-term perspective, yet there are sound grounds for approaching the task positively, if viewed from a multi-year standpoint. Rather surprisingly, for such a quintessentially capitalist society, Hong Kong has not confronted the privatization challenge astutely on the political front and has handled it somewhat mechanically in managerial terms. The benefits to the community may have thus been more modest than one could legitimately expect, given the historical backdrop.     

Testing the impact of trading volume on market return and volatility： The case of the Romanian stock market

This paper examines both the return-volume and volatility-volume movements on Bucharest stock exchange, in order to evaluate the impact of changes in stock market liquidity on stock returns and on volatility of returns. We employ linear Granger-causality tests to investigate the dynamic relation between trading volume, stock returns and returns volatility on the Romanian stock market, using daily logarithmic returns for the composite index BET-C, as a proxy for the market, and daily logarithmic change in trading volume during the period January 2004-July 2008. As a proxy for return volatility we employ absolute values of daily deviation of return from its mean value during the considered time period. We can report unidirectional linear causality from returns to volume and also from volume to volatility.