Exchange Rate Regime Transition Dynamics In East Asia

This paper investigates the currency regime choices of six East Asian emerging countries, namely, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, for the period 1973-99 from the optimum currency area (OCA), macroeconomic stabilization and currency crisis perspectives. It finds that regime transition dynamics in these countries are statistically insignificant for the period under consideration, but static regime choice is largely consistent with the predictions of international macroeconomics. The empirical results suggest that a more fixed or flexible regime is suitable for these East Asian countries.