The eight local currency bond markets in which the Asian Bond Funds 2 (ABF2) invests have continued to develop since 2011. But the development of corporate bonds continues to lag that of government bonds. We focus on areas where we believe there remains work to be done to foster corporate bond...

In this paper, James investigates the evolution of the degree of the pass-through of short-term inflation forecasts to long-term inflation forecasts by using professional forecaster survey data and finds the anchoring of inflation expectations is stronger in many of the sample economies in...

Debt securities markets in emerging market economies (EMEs) have grown over the past decade. The growth was particularly strong for domestic debt securities, which have increased from around one third of EME GDP to around one half. Although international debt securities have demonstrated slower...

This short paper is an abbreviated version of Nishizaki et al (2012). Japan has suffered from long-lasting but mild deflation since the latter half of the 1990s. Estimates of a standard Phillips curve indicate that a decline in inflation expectations, the negative output gap, and other factors...

Global foreign exchange (FX) trading volume in traditional FX products and derivatives in Asia and the Pacific has expanded rapidly over the last 15 years, more so than in other regions. Asian currencies also have experienced exceptional growth in offshore turnover, including that of...

This paper examines the leverage of firms of seven economies in emerging Asia – Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – between 1991 and 2015. For the sample as a whole, neither the mean nor median, nor the upper tails of the leverage distribution...

Prior research suggests that corporate bond issuance in emerging market economies increases when the markets exhibit substantial liquidity. While the Malaysian corporate bond market has grown dramatically over the last few decades, having now become one of the largest among emerging market...

Digital finance has the potential to transform emerging market and advanced economies alike. India's approach rests on the principle of providing digital financial infrastructure as a public good. It offers an important case study where the results are relevant and applicable for all economies,...