Asia-Pacific Economies after the Global Financial Crisis: Lessons Learned and the Way Forward

Although the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 was the worst economic crisis in over 60 years for many industrial countries, most Asian and Pacific developing countries weathered it quite successfully. The resilience of the region is somewhat puzzling at first sight. In an increasingly globalized world, aren’t economic shocks supposed to be transmitted faster and farther than ever before? And shouldn’t the largest shock in decades affecting the central financial centres of the world cause substantial ripple effects? Yet, even those Asian and Pacific countries that were most exposed to drops in imports from the Western industrial countries and suffered significant drops in economic activity in 2009 recovered briskly in 2010. Furthermore, in contrast to the Asian financial crisis of 1997, no country in the region experienced a collapse of its banking sector or a balance of payments crisis.The purpose of the book is to understand why countries in the region were significantly less affected by the crisis than the world’s most advanced economies of Europe and the United States, and what are the main lessons from their experience for building resilience from future crises. The majority of the essays collected in this volume are revised and updated versions of papers presented by experts from the region at a conference organized by the Economic and Social Commission of Asia and the Pacific in Manila in September 2011.