Ka-Fu Wong

• PhD
• Lecturer at The University of Hong Kong

In this paper we argue that the level of democracy of an applicant matters to its GATT/WTO accession duration. Leaders in democratic states have a greater incentive to join the GATT/WTO than do their non-democratic counterpart. In addition, democratic countries usually have a relatively fair, free, and competitive domestic market which makes them e...

We fit a factor model to two monthly panels of deflated prices of energy, metals and agricultural commodities. Prices consistently display a tendency to revert towards the factor, though the speed of reversion to the factor is slow. Using both in- and out-of-sample metrics, we compare the factor model to that of a “no change” model and to two simpl...

In 2005, the US Congress challenged the acquisition by CNOOC (a Chinese state-owned enterprise) of Unocal (a US firm). This challenge creates a political barrier for foreign companies to acquire US oil companies. This paper examines the stock price reaction of US oil companies to this political opposition. Using an event study methodology, we find...

In the two Spring semesters of 2007 and 2008, I taught the course of Economic Forecasting at the Master of Economics level. The course has no teaching assistant. To handle the bi-weekly assignments and discussions with students, I adopted the course management system of WebCT in 2007 and switched to MOODLE in 2008. In this paper, I would like to sh...

Recent studies have suggested that accession to GATT/WTO is a complex, difficult, and lengthy process, and such process has lengthened in recent years. Using survival analysis, we find that the applicant's political regime has a significant impact on the time it takes to accede to GATT/WTO. In particular, the accession duration is likely shorter fo...

With institutional and cultural improvisations facilitated by systems of law regarding custom and rights, Hong Kong has, over the century, absorbed different kinds of migrants and sojourners. The mobile populations have been driven by diverse individual and family strategies. The postwar years saw continuing ebbs and flows of people across Hong Kon...

We propose and evaluate a technique for instrumental variables estimation of linear models with conditional heteroskedasticity. The technique uses approximating parametric models for the projection of right-hand side variables onto the instrument space, and for conditional heteroskedasticity and serial correlation of the disturbance. Use of paramet...

We identify factors that may explain the peg durations in nine Asian countries, via a logit model. Despite some fundamental differences between Asian and Latin American countries, our results are similar to Klein and Marion (1997) on Latin American countries. We find that the real exchange rate relative to the US, the level of international liquidi...

Traditionally, belief in the Chinese zodiac promotes the superstition that the timing of one's birth determines one's fate. Adherence to this belief has resulted in increased birth rates during Dragon years and, hence, problems in the logistics of providing certain public goods and services (such as schools and medical services) by governments. Des...

Using monthly data from G7 and eight Asian countries, support is found for the Fisher hypothesis, as well as a positive relation between long-horizon nominal stock returns and expected inflation but not between long-horizon nominal stock returns and contemporaneous inflation. These empirical results complement and strengthen those of Boudoukh and R...

The information sets used for forecasting inflation in surveys and in econometric models are different. To correctly compare the performances of these two types of forecasts, we use real-time data to reevaluate the out-of-sample predictions from several ARIMA models and a structural model. We find that (1) all the forecasts under-predict the inflat...

This paper documents and interprets the variability in the effects of monetary policy on economic activity using the method of rolling vector autoregression and United States data from 1959:01 to 1994:12. While I find robust support for short-run price stickiness and long-run output neutrality, I also find that the responses of output and price lev...

This paper investigates, via simulation, the performance of the inference of a pretest estimator based on a Hausman's test of exogeneity. I find that an inference based on conventional pretest procedure leads to a substantial size distortion. A bootstrap-based inferential procedure is proposed to take into account the pretesting effect on the small...

This paper compares, vita simulations, the performance of Hausman's test of exogeneity based on first-order asymptotics and a bootstrap procedure in i.i.d. samples. The result shows that to third-order correct bootstrap-based inference procedure performs substantially better than the first-order asymptotics.

Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1997. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-90).