The Cold War and the Ascendance of America’s Research University
Yue Chim Richard Wong 王于漸
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1y ago
(This essay was published in Hong Kong Economic Journal on 29 May 2019.)   The cold war profoundly changed American research universities, both in relation to their role in society and in terms of the scientific and scholarly disciplines practiced and taught within them. During the cold war, leading American universities moved from the periphery to the center of the nation’s political economy, funded by large government research grants that were motivated by the goal of winning the cold war against the Soviet Union.   Clark Kerr, who was chancellor in the 1950s and early 1960s of th ..read more
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The Economic Contribution of Recent Immigrants
Yue Chim Richard Wong 王于漸
by admin
1y ago
(This essay was published in Hong Kong Economic Journal on 24 April 2019.)   Recent immigrants from the Mainland have been blamed for putting pressure on public housing and crowding our public hospitals. This is a highly one-sided view of the impact of immigrants in Hong Kong. It focuses exclusively on their consumption of public resources.   Yet immigrants also contribute to economic production and therefore increase the supply of resources. At the very least, they contribute to the economic workforce and those who are not economically active contribute to much unpaid household wor ..read more
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Family Stability Under the Tenant Purchase Scheme: A 20-Year Experiment
Yue Chim Richard Wong 王于漸
by admin
1y ago
(This essay was published in Hong Kong Economic Journal on 27 March 2019.)   The Tenant Purchase Scheme (TPS) introduced in 1998 sold 140,298 public rental housing (PRH) units to sitting tenants. Initially about 57% of the units available for sale were taken up and in the past decade this increased to 72% of all units offered. Through promoting homeownership, the TPS has increased the labor force participation rate and decreased the unemployment rate of those families who bought these units.   There were two other important effects. The TPS also lowered inequality in housing pr ..read more
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Family Stability Under the Tenant Purchase Scheme: A 20-Year Experiment
Yue Chim Richard Wong 王于漸
by admin
1y ago
(This essay was published in the South China Morning Post on 27 March 2019.)   The Tenant Purchase Scheme (TPS) introduced in 1998 sold 140,298 public rental housing (PRH) units to sitting tenants. Initially, about 57 per cent of the units available for sale were taken up and in the past decade this increased to 72 per cent. Through promoting homeownership, the TPS has increased labor force participation rate and decreased unemployment among those families who bought these units.   But there were two other important effects. The TPS also lowered inequality in housing property wealth ..read more
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Labor Market Consequences of the Tenant Purchase Scheme 20 Years On
Yue Chim Richard Wong 王于漸
by admin
1y ago
(This essay was published in Hong Kong Economic Journal on 27 February 2019.)   The Tenant Purchase Scheme (TPS) was introduced in 1998 as one of two core policy measures for attaining the Government’s goal of achieving 70% homeownership in Hong Kong. The other measure was to supply 85,000 units each year for the following ten years. Both policies were halted in the midst of the protracted deflation and economic stagnation brought on by the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.   Many today are convinced that it would have been better to temporarily halt these two measures rather than a ..read more
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Let All Public Renters Buy Their Flats – Labor Market Consequences
Yue Chim Richard Wong 王于漸
by admin
1y ago
(This essay was published in the South China Morning Post on 27 February 2019.)   The Tenant Purchase Scheme (TPS) was introduced in 1998 to help achieve the Government’s policy goal of 70 per cent homeownership in Hong Kong. Since then, 140,298 units have been sold to sitting tenants, representing a very substantial stock of public assets worth at least $300 billion – an amount much larger than the construction cost of the Shatin-Central Railway.   They have also had another consequence – on the labor market. Census statistics help to tell the story.   The 39 public ..read more
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When Teenagers are Unable to Learn From Their Parents
Yue Chim Richard Wong 王于漸
by admin
1y ago
(This essay was published in Hong Kong Economic Journal on 30 January 2019.)   Children learn from their parents simply by being around them. A great deal of human capital that a child possesses is acquired at home and from parents. Alfred Marshall, in his Principles of Economics (1880), wrote: “The greatest capital that you can invest in is human capital, and, of that, the most important component is the mother.”   Marshall’s observations turned out to be prescient. Research in the past decades has shown that a mother’s education is a far more significant predictor of the future su ..read more
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For Your Children’s Sake
Yue Chim Richard Wong 王于漸
by admin
1y ago
(This essay was published in the South China Morning Post on 30 January 2019.)   A stable nourishing family is an important bedrock for a child’s future achievement in life. Numerous studies have shown how the family environment is key to a young child’s future schooling achievements, earned income, mental health and many other measures. A lot of the focus has been on early childhood. But parental involvement is also critical for teenagers.   Teenagers learn from their parents. The mother’s role is particularly important for human capital development, which is a time-intensive activ ..read more
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Interpreting the Chinese Revolution
Yue Chim Richard Wong 王于漸
by admin
1y ago
(This essay was published in Hong Kong Economic Journal on 2 January 2019.)   In late November an email group I belong to happened to discuss a New York Times article on why China may be in the process of managing its decline. After a long exchange, one participant noted, “My only comment here is that for the 25 years I have been in Hong Kong, every year Western pundits have forecast the demise of the Chinese economy. Maybe one day they will be right.”   Doomsday economists will inevitably get it right one day if they keep predicting the same message. Reliable predictions, however ..read more
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Youth Near Poverty and the Poverty Line
Yue Chim Richard Wong 王于漸
by admin
1y ago
(This essay was published in Hong Kong Economic Journal on 28 November 2018.)   The recent Hong Kong Poverty Situation Report 2017 announced that the number of persons below the poverty line in 2017 was 1.377 million, 25,000 more than the figure in 2016. The poverty rate thus rose 0.2 percentage points to 20.1%. After government cash transfers including the Old Age Living Allowance (OALA) and Low Income Working Family Allowance (LIFA) are factored in, the poverty figure fell to 14.7%, or 1.01 million, a rate similar to the previous year.   But instead of trying to understa ..read more
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