UC Riverside

The world has witnessed that some countries have been benefiting substantially from economic and financial globalization and the expansion of world trade while others have not. At the same time, since economies are more interconnected shocks from one economy spread faster worldwide. With the increasing degree of integration of economies around the world, it seems crucial to study international transmission mechanisms of business cycles and policy designs in open economies. This dissertation addresses three interesting questions from the perspective of open economy macroeconomics: 1) What are the main factors to explain the secular change of the Hong Kong national saving rate? 2) What is the transmission mechanism of the U.S. monetary policy shock and other shocks to the Hong Kong economy under the Currency Board system? 3) What is the role of the banking sector and macroprudential policy in the propagation of national and international business cycles?