The squeeze in US dollar liquidity that emerged with the global financial crisis highlighted the risks associated with the current global financial system. Asia was adversely affected by the crisis not only because of its dependence on trade, but also because of its heavy reliance on the US...

Can a government credibly promise not to bailout firms whose failure would have major negative systemic consequences? Our analysis of the Republic of Korea's 1997–1999 crisis, suggests an answer: No. Despite a general "no bailout" policy during the crisis, the largest Korean corporate groups...

The paper discusses key challenges faced throughout the Asia and the Pacific region as a number of its developing economies graduate from low-income status to middle-income status at the same time as the region remains home to the majority of the world's poor people and a number of fragile...

The economy of the Republic of Korea was hit harder than anticipated by the global financial crisis. In the first phase, large capital outflows led to a severe liquidity strain in the foreign exchange market resulting in a rapid depreciation of the exchange rate. Then, in the second phase, the...

This paper asks, first, whether today's developing economies can achieve high-income status without first building large manufacturing sectors. We find that practically every economy that enjoys a high income today experienced a manufacturing employment share in excess of 18%-20% sometime since...

This paper studies the effects of the United States' (US) quantitative easing on Asia by examining capital flows and financial markets. After the global financial crisis, Asian economies with more open and developed capital markets experienced greater swings in capital inflows. In particular,...

The strong and volatile rebound of capital inflows, mostly portfolio investments, into emerging economies in the recovery process of the 2008 global financial crisis has brought the issue of capital controls to the forefront once again. The presence of global imbalances and unconventional...

We investigate changes in Asia's regional and global trade linkages and their influence on macroeconomic relationships among Asia, Europe, and United States (US). We first document changes in trade patterns of East Asia, Europe, and US and discuss stylized facts about East Asia's trade...

This study examines the impact of capital controls using monthly information to construct higher-frequency, quarterly indexes for Malaysia during the period 2000-2008 and Thailand over the period 2000-2010 in a vector auto-regression model. The results show that restrictions in Thailand have no...

Using a growth accounting framework, we find that developing Asia grew rapidly over the past 3 decades mainly due to robust growth in capital accumulation. The contributions of education and total factor productivity in the region's past economic growth remain relatively limited. Our baseline...