A common view holds that the trend toward Asian financial regionalism is a relatively new phenomenon that became significant after the Asian financial crisis of 1997/98. This paper challenges this view by exploring and analyzing financial regionalist projects in Asia throughout the 1990s. As...

Bilateral and regional cooperation initiatives in Asia have been growing in importance over the last five years.These accords span the real and financial sectors; rather than following the more typical pattern of "trade first,money later", recent policy initiatives involve the simultaneous...

The financial crisis in Europe has resulted in a new assessment of monetary and financial integration both in Europe and in Asia. Before the current crisis, regional integration in monetary and fiscal affairs including mechanisms to stabilize exchange rates enjoyed a lot of academic and...

In this paper, we analyze data on trends since 2000 in foreign holdings of government securities and other debt securities, with emphasis on Japan and developing Asia. We find that foreign residents generally increased their holdings of Asian debt securities during the sample period and in...

Asia's bank-centered financial systems require the reduced supply-demand gap in lending as a core policy pillar to improve small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) access to finance. Meanwhile, the diversification of financing modalities beyond conventional bank lending is another key policy...

The central objective of this paper is to empirically assess how global imbalances have evolved since the global financial crisis of 2008/09. More specifically, we examine how the security investment positions of major East Asian economies in United States (US) financial markets - equities,...

This paper employs multivariate GARCH models with a BEKK specification to show significant shock and volatility spillovers from mature bond markets into select emerging Asian local currency bond markets. Results reveal that while the growth of individual bond markets in recent years has been...

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) stimulate domestic demand through job creation, innovation, and competition; thus, they can be a driving force behind a resilient national economy. In addition, SMEs involved in global production supply chains have the potential to encourage international...

In understanding the proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) in Asia since 2000, it is important to distinguish between two types of FTAs in terms of a legal basis on either General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Article XXIV or the Enabling Clause. The latter provision can be used...

This question is examined via a standard import specification augmented with differential and time-varying impacts of each component of aggregate demand: consumption, investment, government spending, and exports. Several important variables in explaining import demand such as credit conditions...