Search results

The East Asian crisis was the result of interactions between massive capital flows and weak domestic institutions. This paper examines the weaknesses in the financial and corporate sectors that were at the heart of the crisis, reviews the economic consequences of these weaknesses and outlines the progress in financial and corporate sector restructuring. Significant progress has been made in reforming East Asian financial sectors. Governments have committed themselves to improving the regulation and supervision of banks and non-bank financial institutions, raising competition in the financial sector, strengthening corporate governance, and developing local capital markets and equity financing. East Asia's experience has shown that if a systemic crisis in the financial and corporate sectors develops, governments need to put in place coherent frameworks for resolving banking and corporate distress. Governments will also need to segment the crisis and prioritise their responses.

Financial deregulation and capital‐account liberalization preceded speculative currency attacks in Thailand. A combination of de facto fixed exchange rates and high rates of interest generated excessive capital inflows, which led to too much liquidity chasing bad investments. The under‐supervised and over‐guaranteed financial sector extended loans excessively, particularly for non‐productive, speculative purposes. Non‐transparent practices, in the form of weak disclosure of institutions' true balance sheets and insider relations, masked these poor investments. The buildup of short‐term, unhedged debt left East Asian economies vulnerable to a sudden collapse of confidence. Currency attacks ran down official foreign exchange reserves. Rapid capital outflows and the consequent depreciation of currencies exacerbated the strains on private sector balance sheets. The policy lessons are to (i) use macroeconomic policy to avoid excessive capital inflows and currency overvaluation, (ii) strengthen the financial system, with proper disclosure and accounting requirements, stringent loan classification and provisioning rules, and capital adequacy requirements, prior to capital‐account liberalization, (iii) stabilize exchange rates based on currency baskets that reflect trade and investment linkages, and (iv) develop regional. financial cooperation with regional surveillance and peer pressure to maintain policy discipline.

Asia has witnessed a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) since the turn of the millennium. The first regional agreement -- the ASEAN FTA -- was transformed into the ASEAN Economic Community at the end of 2015. In the meantime, ASEAN forged five ASEAN+1 FTAs and began to negotiate a sixteen-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement. In parallel, the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supporting U.S. foreign policy of "Pivot to Asia", was broadly agreed in October 2015. The RCEP and the TPP are accompanied by other mega-regional integration processes developing elsewhere in the world, including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership for the European Union and the United States, and the Pacific Alliance among four Latin American member states. Meanwhile, APEC is also striving to meet its Bogor Goal targets and create a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. Each of these mega-regionals aims to achieve greater trade and investment liberalization and facilitation and more harmonized trade and investment rules so that all member economies can participate in the global value chain of production. Instead of undermining, these regional exercises can be building blocks for a more liberal global trading system supported by the World Trade Organization.This book ruminates on these regional agreements, their economic and strategic rationales and challenges during negotiations and afterwards. The book brings together eminent scholars and experts to deepen our understanding of the complex nature of the mega-regional trade agreements and their implications. It is useful both for the academic and research community and for policymakers who focus on trade and economic cooperation issues

This book contributes to the theoretical and empirical literature on Asian regionalism, with a focus on the innovations needed to reform the current institutional architecture in Asia. After reviewing the key issues and challenges related to the political economy of Asia's economic cooperation and integration, the book discusses various aspects of regionalism from political and economic perspectives. It looks at the rationale for regional collective action and reviews the trend of economic integration with a focus on the implications of the global financial crisis. In addition to reviewing the key issues related to the development of regional institutions for integration, the book analyzes issues such as trade and finance and deals with the implications of regionalism in terms of the introduction of domestic reforms in Asian countries before discussing the possible formation of a region-wide economic community. The eight chapters of the book are based on respective papers initially prepared for the Asian Development Bank Institute Conference 2010.

The spread of Asia's free trade agreements (FTAs) has sparked an important debate on the impact of such agreements on business activity. This pioneering study uses new evidence from surveys of East Asian exporters – including Japan, the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Korea and three ASEAN economies of the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – to shed light on the FTA debate. -- Critics are concerned that FTAs erode the multilateral trading process and foster an alarming 'noodle bowl' of overlapping regulations and rules of origin requirements – which may be costly to business. Asia's Free Trade Agreements makes key recommendations for improving business use of FTA preferences, reducing costs of FTAs and creating a region-wide FTA.

The growing weight of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the world economy, measured by gross domestic product (GDP) and trade volume, has intensified debate on the potential international role of its currency - the renminbi (RMB). This paper provides an overview of RMB internationalization issues. Reviewing the current state of RMB internationalization, the paper finds that much progress has been made on RMB settlements for trade involving the PRC and on RMB-denominated bond issuance in Hong Kong, China, but that RMB internationalization is still limited due to capital account controls. The paper argues that a high degree of RMB internationalization requires significant capital account liberalization - supported by financial market liberalization including market-determined interest rates, and by effective financial regulation and supervision - which in turn would call for greater exchange rate flexibility so that the People's Bank of China (PBOC) can enjoy monetary policy autonomy. This, however, would pose a challenge for PRC authorities as hasty capital account liberalization could expose PRC financial markets to the risk of crisis. The paper also emphasizes the importance of institutional reforms - such as making the PBOC independent from political processes, improving the judicial system to implement rule of law, raising transparency and accountability of policy making, and democratizing the political regime - to make the RMB a truly international reserve currency. Finally, the paper explores the implications of RMB internationalization for the international monetary system.

We present a theoretical framework for policy making based on the "impossible trinity" or the "trilemma" hypothesis. A simple optimization model shows that placing more weight in terms of preference for each of the three open macroeconomic policies - exchange rate stability, financial market openness, and monetary policy independence - contributes to a higher level of achievement in that particular policy. We then develop the first empirical framework in the literature to investigate the joint determination of the triad open macroeconomic policies based on the trilemma hypothesis. Specifically, we estimate the three policy indexes under the trilemma constraint that they must add up to a constant. By applying the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) estimation method and employing other robustness checks, we demonstrate that simple economic and structural fundamentals determine the trilemma policy combinations. Last, we examine how deviations from the "optimal" trilemma policy combinations evolve around the time of a financial crisis. Policy combinations seem to violate the trilemma constraint when a currency, banking, or debt crisis breaks out. These findings suggest that deviations from the trilemma hypothesis would create policy stress, which would have to manifest itself in a crisis unless policy makers adjust the policy combination in a way consistent with the trilemma constraint.