Business cycles in a small open economy: The case of Hong Kong

This paper was presented at the All China Economics (ACE) International Conference, Hong Kong, 2006, XXXIII Symposium of Economic Analysis, Spain, 2007, DEGIT XVI Dynamics, Economic Growth and International Trade, Los Angeles, USA, 2009.This paper analyzes the business cycle properties of the Hong Kong economy during the 1982-2004 period, which includes the financial crisis experienced in 1997-98. We show that output, output growth rate and real interest rates volatilities in Hong Kong are higher than their respective average volatilities among developed economies. In this paper, we build a stochastic neoclassical small open economy model that seeks to replicate the main business cycle characteristics of Hong Kong, and through which we try to quantify the role played by exogenous Total Factor Productivity (transitory and permanent), real interest rates shocks and financial frictions. The main findings are that the trend volatility has to be higher than the volatility of the transitory fluctuations around the trend; that the volatility of real interest rates are mainly due to country risk spread, and that financial frictions matter to explain real interest rates countercyclicality.Financial support from Universidad del País Vasco MACLAB, project IT-241-07, and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, project ECO2009-09732 are gratefully acknowledged