Research Seminar Series: Dr. Kian Howe Ong

This is a hybrid research seminar at the Asia School of Business, ft. Dr. Kian Howe Ong from Nottingham University Business School China
About this Event

Dear Academic and Corporate Peers,

We are thrilled to invite you to the upcoming session of the Research Seminar Series at the Asia School of Business, featuring Dr. Kian Howe Ong.

Seminar Title:

Testing the Great Ratios Hypothesis with Minimum Distance Estimation and Bootstrap Test under Weak Assumptions

Event Details:

📅 Date: 22nd July, 2026 (Wednesday)

⏰ Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm

📍Venue: CR-W2-04, Asia School of Business

💻 Zoom Link: https://asb-my.zoom.us/j/96829115533?pwd=iZMbUtUH2Z2XZnNxsUc73ascHbrvL6.1

Meeting ID: 968 2911 5533

Passcode: 189095

📝 Register here: https://bit.ly/asb-22july26

Abstract

The macro-economic literature found little evidence for the great ratios hypothesis (GRH) that certain long-run ratios are unity, until the `System Pooled Mean Group (SPMG)' estimator pooled the ratios across equations and countries. However, SPMG does not test whether pooling is coherent with the data. In this paper, we use bivariate unrestricted error correction models to estimate equation- and country-specific ratios. Then we test for the poolability, using Minimum Distance Estimator (MDE) and its asymptotic and bootstrap tests. The tests support GRH mostly, and the MDE-pooled ratios are 0.9 ~ 1.1 at least in 6/8 relationships, except for two inflation-involved ratios. The MDE is general and can be used in any context where we want to impose restrictions on the estimates.

Speaker Bio

Dr Kian Howe Ong is from Kuala Lumpur. He is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Business School, The University of Nottingham Ningbo China. His research areas are economic convergence, fiscal decentralisation and purchasing power parity. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Nottingham Malaysia and his Master’s and PhD in Economics at the Nottingham School of Economics, UK.