Stock Market Development And Economic Growth In Hong Kong: An Empirical Investigation

This paper examines the relationship between stock market development and economic growth using time-series data from Hong Kong. The study uses three proxies of stock market development, namely: stock market capitalisation, stock market traded value, and stock market turnover. Given the weaknesses associated with the traditional co-integration techniques, the current study uses the recently introduced ARDL-bounds testing approach to examine the nexus between stock market development and economic growth in a dynamic setting. The empirical results show that the direction of causality between stock market development and economic growth depends on the proxy used to measure the level of stock market development. When stock market capitalisation is used as a proxy for stock market development, a distinct unidirectional causal flow from stock market development to economic growth is found to prevail, without any feedback. However, when stock market turnover is used, a causal flow from economic growth to stock market development is found to prevail in the short run and in the long run, while a causal flow from stock market development to economic growth is only found in the short run. The causality between stock market traded value and economic growth, however, failed to yield any long-run causal relationship from either direction. Only a short-run causality flow from economic growth to stock market traded value could be detected in this case.