Simultaneous volatility transmissions and spillover effects: U.S. and Hong Kong stock and futures markets

Contemporaneous transmission effects across volatilities of the Hong Kong Stock and Index futures markets and futures volume of trade are tested by employing a structural systems approach. Competing measures of volatility spillover, constructed from the overnight U.S. S&P500 index futures, are tested and found to impact on the Hong Kong asset return volatility and volume of trade patterns. The examples utilize intra-day 15-min sampled data from this medium-sized Asia Pacific equity and derivative exchange. Both the intra- and inter-day patterns in the Hong Kong market are allowed for in the estimation process.

Evaluating health promotion in schools: a case study of design, implementation and results from the Hong Kong Healthy Schools Award Scheme

Health promoting schools (HPS) and Healthy Schools Award Schemes from a number of countries have demonstrated positive changes in children’s health behaviours and the culture and organisation of the school. The Hong Kong Healthy Schools Award Scheme (HKHSA) aims to promote staff development, parental education, involvement of the whole school community, and linkage with different stakeholders to improve the health and well-being of the pupils, parents and staff, and the broader community, supported by a system to monitor the achievement. This concept is very much in line with the research literature on school effectiveness and improvement. The indicators examined to evaluate the success of the HKHSA reflect outcomes related to both health and education and are not limited to changes in population health status. The early results demonstrated significant improvements in various aspects of student health and also improvement in school culture and organisation. The evaluation framework described in this paper and data collected to assess how schools perform in the HKHSA scheme, provides insight into how HPSs could lead to better outcomes for both education and health.

A values approach to business education in Hong Kong

This paper investigates the learning behaviour, learning environment and learning outcomes of Hong Kong Chinese students enrolled on an Australian university's Bachelor of Business degree course taught by visiting Australian lecturers in Hong Kong. The Chinese students are task-focused and passive learners. They do not demonstrate creative thinking, critical analysis or risk taking in problem solving, and appear to focus on surface-level rote learning. Semi-structured interviews with students and lecturers identified the changes experienced in learning behaviour and teaching strategies. By applying a teaching and learning value chain developed by Radbourne in 2001 and using Biggs's 3P culturally modified model of teaching and learning, new teaching strategies were developed to ensure that the Chinese Hong Kong students graduated with the capabilities required to be effective in the global workplace. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

Environmental benchmarking of Hong Kong buildings

A method for assessing the environmental performance of Hong Kong’s buildings has been developed, known as the Hong Kong Building Environmental Assessment Method or HK-BEAM. The assessment is a type of expert-based survey, either of the design, in the case of proposed buildings, or an evaluation of building performance for newly built or existing buildings. The assessment essentially provides a benchmark of environmental performance against a series of qualitative and quantitative measures that earn “credits”. Buildings can be rated as “excellent”, “very good”, “good” or “fair”. The assessment covers global, local and indoor issues. The original assessment has been in use since 1996 and allowed appraisal of new and existing air-conditioned offices. A new version has been recently produced for residential buildings. The latest version has addressed some of the criticisms of the earlier versions and covers a wider range of issues, taking a life-cycle approach. Reviews the latest new residential version, making comparisons with the earlier new offices scheme.

Low energy strategies for high-rise apartments in Hong Kong

High-rise apartments provide 90% of the living requirements in Hong Kong. (Lam 1995) The construction material of these buildings is primarily concrete for both external wall and interior partitions with little or no thermal insulation. Due to the hot and humid climatic conditions and expectations of an ever-increasing standard of living, occupants are installing air-conditioning systems into their apartments. This has generated a tremendous electrical demand as well as an environmental (greenhouse gas emission) concern. This paper explores some of the low energy strategies that can be applied to this building typology. The effect of seven energy-saving strategies ranging from thermal insulation to different window systems and shading devices was investigated. The results show that there is the potential to reduce the annual cooling energy consumption and peak cooling load by 40% and 33% respectively.

Evaluating a measure of content quality for accounting narratives (with an empirical application to narratives from Australia, Hong Kong, and the United States)

This paper evaluates a texture-based approach developed by Sydserff and Weetman (1999), to examine corporate annual report narratives. This is achieved by using the texture index to evaluate information content (which includes readability) in accounting narratives. Specifically, we examine the letter to shareholders of reports from Australia, Hong Kong and the United States.

We suggest a texture-based evaluation provides a robust measure of narrative quality due to the incorporation of readability and content analysis. The ability to measure content quality assists in promoting accountability, with the aim of improving usefulness of corporate
information and disclosures, and greater investor confidence in capital markets.

This paper also investigates these exploratory results to consider variations in quality between different countries. Considerable differences were found between the countries with Hong Kong reports generally superior. These tentative findings provide a small contribution to the comparative annual report literature and the emerging area of narrative evaluation.

Self-perceived quality of life of children and adolescents with physical disabilities in Hong Kong

Although illnesses and diseases are thought to adversely affect quality of life (QoL), whether children who have physical disabilities (PD) from a young age adapt to the effect of developmental disabilities has rarely been investigated. This study attempted to assess the subjective wellbeing, and examine the correlation between objective and subjective QoL, of children with PD. Using a self-reported non-disease-specific questionnaire, the QoL of 72 young persons (13.5 ± 2.0 years) with PD was contrasted with those who do not have disabilities (n = 510; age-matched). MANOVA analyses revealed that the PD group had lower objective QoL score (63.0 ± 7.4 vs. 66.8 ± 5.7, p < 0.001) but the two groups were not significantly different in subjective QoL score (70.9 ± 11.4 vs. 69.6 ± 13.6, p = 0.466). No correlation was found between objective and subjective QoL in the PD group (r ranged from 0.06 to 0.19), while weak to medium correlations (r ranged from 0.03 to 0.41) were observed for the controls. The apparent detachment of subjective feeling and objective circumstances in the PD group may reflect adjustment to developmental disabilities.

Can health promoting schools contribute to the better health and wellbeing of young people? The Hong Kong experience.

Background: The Health Promoting School (HPS) is a WHO sponsored framework, compiled to enable education and health sectors to be more effective in school based initiatives.

Aims: This study attempted to test the hypothesis that students from schools that had comprehensively embraced the HPS concept as indicated by the Healthy School Award, were better, in terms of health risk behaviour, self reported health status, and academic results, than students from schools that did not reach the standard of the award.

Methods and Results: The results presented came from nine schools (four primary and five secondary) applying for accreditation of the Healthy Schools Award after adopting the HPS framework for two years. Regular consultancy support and training were available to all schools. Students had completed before and after surveys to assess their health behaviours, self reported health status, and academic standing before the two year intervention, and at its end. Data from the before and after surveys of the students attending schools that reached certain level of HPS standard as indicated by the award, were compared with students whose schools did not receive the award, and the results showed differences. Some differences were found to be more significant among the primary school students than secondary schools students. This illustrated early intervention for lifestyle changes to be more effective. Students’ satisfaction with life also improved if their schools adopted the concept of HPS comprehensively.

Conclusions: The results suggest that comprehensive implementation of HPS would contribute to differences in certain behaviours and self reported health and academic status.

Application of the adaptive reuse potential model in Hong Kong : a case study of Lui Seng Chun

There is an increasing complexity and interplay between all of the issues associated with property portfolio decisions. This paper explores the relationships between financial, environmental and social parameters associated with building adaptive reuse by way of a case study. A new model predicting adaptive reuse potential is applied to a heritage building in Hong Kong known as Lui Seng Chun. Such application can assist in the transformation of the building and property industry towards more sustainable practices, strategies and outcomes, by providing a means by which the industry can identify and rank existing buildings that have high potential for adaptive reuse. In Hong Kong's case it provides an ability for sustainable, responsive energy and natural resource management by allowing issues regarding excessive and inappropriate resource use to be identified and assessed, and appropriate management strategies to be implemented. Given the building's current age and condition, Lui Seng Chun has at least 25 years of physical life remaining. The further application of a multi-criteria sustainability evaluation tool supports the conclusion that an adaptive reuse strategy for this building will make a demonstrable contribution to the economic, social and environmental amenity of Hong Kong. The application of these techniques to other buildings with significant "embedded physical life" is highly recommended.

The status of health-promoting schools in Hong Kong and implications for further development

An evaluation framework, called the Hong Kong Healthy Schools Award, has been developed to enable comprehensive collection and analysis of data reflecting the status of health-promoting schools (HPS) in Hong Kong. The key findings revealed a high prevalence of emotional problems, unhealthy eating habits, physical inactivity and risk-taking behaviours, leading to both intentional and unintentional injuries among students with higher prevalence among secondary school students. The results indicated a substantial lack of health policies in schools; it also indicated health services in schools not readily accessible to students and staff, and insufficient staff training in health promotion and education. However, most schools have made initiatives in environmental protection, established safety guidelines and strategies for managing students with emotional problems. The success of HPS depends largely on teachers' understanding of its building blocks. Evidence from the comprehensive mapping of the status of HPS in Hong Kong and from student surveys does show encouraging outcomes as well as identifying priority issues to be addressed in the next 5 years.