The Hong Kong dollar has been pegged to the U.S. dollar since 1983. Recently, the rapid economic integration between Mainland China and Hong Kong has raised concern about the continuing optimality of the peg. Officially, the Hong Kong Special Adminstrative Region (HKSAR) is under the framework of "one country, two systems" and "one country, two currencies". Hence monetary integration was never in the pipeline. However, is the existence of separate currencies consistent with the fast changing economic reality? Would a re-peg with the Renminbi, the Chinese currency, or even a monetary union with the Mainland, be possible options, particularly if the Renminbi becomes fully convertible some time in the future? If so, what are the preconditions for the options? What needs to be done to prepare for them? This paper addresses these interesting questions by going through the complicated issues of trade, real versus nominal convergence, risk sharing as well as labour mobility. It emerges that the status quo is optimal in the foreseeable future.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research in its series Working Papers with number
152002.
Length: 28 pages Date of creation: Sep 2002 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:hkm:wpaper:152002
Contact details of provider: Postal: 55th Floor , Two International Finance Centre , 8 Finance Street , Central, Hong Kong Phone: (852)2878 1978 Fax: (852)2878 7006 Email: Web page: http://www.hkimr.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (HKIMR).
Related research
Keywords:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: