Assistant Professor in Economics
The University of Nottingham Ningbo China
KianHowe.Ong[at]outlook.com
Research Interest: Applied Macroeconomics, Applied Econometrics.
Keywords: 1. Economic Convergence, Economic Growth, Regional Inequality; 2. Government Spending, Centralised Fiscal Transfers, Fiscal Multipliers, Fiscal Decentralisation; 3. Long-run Economic Relationships, Purchasing Power Parity. 4. Panel Time-Series
Ong, K., 2018, Do Fiscal Spending News Shocks Generate Financial Spillovers?, Economics Letters, 164, 46-49.
Lee, K., K. Ong, K. Shields, 2020, Making Fiscal Adjustments Using Event Probability Forecasts in OECD Countries, The Economic Record Vol 96, Issue 314, 294 - 313.
Matthews, K., K. Ong, 2022, Is Inflation Caused by Deteriorating Inflation Expectations or Excessive Monetary Growth?, Economic Affairs Vol 42, Issue 2, 259-274. YouTube presentation 2024 follow-up presentation
Ong, K., K. Matthews, B. Wang, 2023, Growth versus Equity: The Effects of Centralised Fiscal Transfers on Chinese Provinces, Regional Studies, 57(11), 2307-2322. Cardiff-Fudan Working Paper 22/02 Revised draft replication_readme
Ong, K., K. Matthews, B. Wang, 2024, The Rising Tides That Lift the Boats: Growth through Heterogenous Convergence in Chinese Provinces, Open Economies Review, 35(4), 751-778. slides_conference slides_seminar SSRN
Ong, K., 2024, Do Countries Converge to Their Steady States at Different Rates? Open Economies Review, 35(4), 723-749. SSRN slides_wams slides_ppt
Ong, K., 2024, Adjusting toward Long-run Purchasing Power Parity, Journal of International Money and Finance, 149, 103204. SSRN replication codes slides_conference slides_esam This paper finds evidence for relative PPP because we pool the long-run, allow two-way long-run causality and use long-span data (1870-2020).
Regional Income Convergence is Heterogeneous: Evidence from Brazil, The European Union, China and Malaysia. Structuring convergence models in three ways—income versus growth, steady states, and parameter heterogeneity—and comparing them with the data reveals differences across economies and leads to the heterogeneous common factor model. It accommodates spillovers, episodic growth and heterogeneity across regions. SSRN world_congress
Testing the Great Ratios Hypothesis Using the Minimum Distance Estimation Under Weak Assumptions (with M.J. Lee) builds on: This paper decomposes the System Pooled Mean Group estimator into bivariate unrestricted vector error correction models. We estimate long-run ratios (consumption-income, investment-income, debt-income, imports-exports, exchange rate-relative prices, short-long interest rates, inflation-long interest rate, and inflation-money growth) for each country and pool the elasticities via the Minimum Distance Estimation (MDE). The MDE optimally combines countries' ratios, provides an over-identifying test and is more robust to outliers than the mean group.
Estimating the Fiscal Multipliers with Real-time Government Budget (with J.C. Morley, K. Shields and K. Lee) builds on
Who knows best? Do intergovernmental transfers reduce regional income inequality in China? (with K. Matthews and B. Wang) builds on Vertical Government External Grant awarded: Zhejiang Philosophy and Social Science Programme (PI; Sep 30th, 2025 - Sep 30th, 2028)
Do Climate anomalies affect where people live? Evidence from Southeast Asia, 2000-2020 (with FKS Chan, P.S. Wibisana and M. Meng) Climate Anomalies and Subnational Demographic Shifts in Southeast Asia, ADM02-level, 1958-2020
World Bank forthcoming (2025) “Understanding and Unlocking State-Level Growth Potential in Malaysia”, Washington, DC: The World Bank. (with A. Samano, I.A. Razak and World Bank)
Box 2: ASEAN as Malaysia’s Growth Catalyst: Measuring Spillover Effects. (with A. Sanghi, YT Tay and FJW Lim) World Bank (2025) “From Bytes to Benefits: Digital Transformation as a Catalyst for Public Sector Productivity”, Malaysia Economic Monitor (October), Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Climate, Finance, and Economic Sustainability — University of Leicester, UK and online, Dec 4-6, 2025 (Thurs-Sat)
Measuring The Fiscal Multiplier When Plans Take Time to Implement (with K. Lee, J.C. Morley and K. Shields), CAMA Working Paper 13/2019.
Net Foreign Assets Dynamics: The Persistence and Sources of Shocks to Net Foreign Assets in 12 EU Countries. MPRA
The Effects of Mediums of Instruction on Educational- and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Malaysia (with R. Parinduri) MPRA Paper No. 87560.
Kian is from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and Southeast Asia. He completed his undergraduate at the University of Nottingham Malaysia and his Masters and PhD in Economics at the Nottingham School of Economics, UK. He then spent a year as a research fellow at the Department of Economics, University of Melbourne. Financed by ARC Discovery Grant DP140103029: Analysis of Fiscal Policy Responses to Macroeconomic Conditions in Australia and the US using Real Time Data. He worked for two years at Nottingham Malaysia before joining Nottingham Ningbo China in 2019. I am very grateful to the University of Nottingham for sponsoring my studies since undergraduate.