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The Global Crisis: Why Laisser-faire Hong Kong Prefers Regulation


This paper explains why, despite the anti-Keynesian convictions of officials and academics, Hong Kong abandoned its initial commitment to the concepts of virtuous markets and moral hazard and resisted importing the prevailing Anglo-American regulatory ‘culture’. It reviews foreign attacks on the government’s intervention to protect financial markets during global crises and shows that these critics have misunderstood the limits of Hong Kong’s attachment to laisser faire. The analysis traces the process by which increasingly strict regulation has been introduced without hindering the expansion of Hong Kong’s role as a major international financial centre.

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