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Laissez-faire’s Limitations: The Evolution of Monetary Policy in Hong Kong, 1935–80

In: Hong Kong SAR’s Monetary and Exchange Rate Challenges

Author

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  • Leo Goodstadt

Abstract

Hong Kong’s path to prosperity has been very different from other Third World societies. Its economic performance in the second half of the last century was a record of sustained and largely self-financed success.2 Its growth rates were, arguably, unparalleled in economic history, and real GDP increased each year without exception from 1961 until 1998.3 Economic expansion was never hindered by a shortage of the capital needed to finance high-speed growth.4 Also remarkable was how little change took place in the government’s economic policies. Laissez-faire was discarded by the rest of the world but flourished in Hong Kong together with free trade, a belief in the efficacy of free market forces and minimal state interference with business. Hong Kong also stuck to the monetary arrangements of the past. It retained a ‘currency board’ system, and the government insisted that interventionist monetary policies were unnecessary because the Hong Kong economy was self-regulating.

Suggested Citation

  • Leo Goodstadt, 2009. "Laissez-faire’s Limitations: The Evolution of Monetary Policy in Hong Kong, 1935–80," Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Banking and Financial Institutions, in: Catherine R. Schenk (ed.), Hong Kong SAR’s Monetary and Exchange Rate Challenges, chapter 4, pages 75-94, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:pmschp:978-0-230-59474-6_4
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230594746_4
    as

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