Despite a number of changes in the leaderships of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) and in the policy approaches adopted by the country to restructure the banking sector, the progress has been less than impressive. This study shows that that the selection of policy measures adopted...

The world’s largest donor of ODA during the 1990s, Japan, is now making substantial cuts. ODA decreased by three per cent for the fiscal year ending March 2002 and for the coming year another ten percent cut will be made. This is an attempt to improve the situation of the Japanese state budget...

This paper re-assesses the prospects for greater monetary integration in Asia in the wake of the Asian financial crisis of 1997. The Asian crisis highlighted the absence of well-developed supranational institutions in Asia to provide early warning signals of impending currency or balance of...

The main part of Japanese aid is directed to Asia and there has been a strong emphasis on economic infrastructure, that is building railways, roads and ports etc. Recently however there is a refocusing towards environmental aid and “softer” types of aid such as poverty alleviation and social...

Southeast Asia’s traditional export of relatively low-skilled products is facing increased competition. There is therefore a general need to upgrade production in the region, which requires a more skilled and educated labour force. Historically, education has not been emphasized in Southeast...

Technological governance has only been partially successful for technological upgrading in the five ASEAN countries discussed, with the exception of Singapore. This is a reflection of the fact that FDI is poorly integrated in local and national structures which severely limits the spill-over...

One of the curiosities about the Japanese banking sector for Westerners is the close connection between banks and the financial authority, namely Ministry of Finance (MoF). One of the important sources of this connection is the practice called amakudari. Amakudari symbolizes the practice under...

This paper examines a number of traditional characteristics of the Swedish welfare state, and discusses how they have been changed over time, especially since the economic crisis in the early 1990s. It emphasizes that the country did not only suffer from the economic crisis and recent...

Ten years have passed since the Swedish government widely encouraged its municipalities to marketize their elderly care services. There has been a long-standing discussion on the benefit of marketization during that period, but most of the discussions were developed from the case studies of a...

In this paper different schools of Japanese policymaking are classified according to two variables: a) Defense/criticism of Japanese practices; and b) Number of actors. Then the common focal point of all such schools on the relevant actors and their relationships is reiterated and discussed....