Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is an appealing theory of the determination of longrun equilibrium exchange rates as it is founded on the intuitive proposition that opportunities for arbitrage will not go unexploited. However, in practice, measuring PPP exchange rates is hindered by difficulties...

Since 2001, foreign investors have been permitted to acquire minority ownership stakes in China�s banks. This paper assesses whether there is any evidence of a cost efficiency payoff in those banks that have taken on foreign investment. Data Envelopment Analysis is first used to generate...

Vietnam became the official member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the 7th of November, 2006. Joining the WTO has brought great opportunities as well as challenges to the Vietnamese economy, especially the agricultural industry. The nation has 73.7% of its population living in rural...

WTO entry in 2001 heralded a new stage in the reform of China’s banking sector. With the reality that foreign banks would be extended national treatment by the end of 2006, China’s banks faced the imperative to reform in earnest. They began reforms from a variety of different starting points...

This paper critically comments on the policy literature surrounding China�s exchange rate regime. It first seeks to expose as myths several popularly raised contentions regarding the dollar peg employed by China, including the belief that the RMB is clearly undervalued and that its value is...

Stability condition is an essential topic of monetary policy rules. If the policy rule can not satisfy the stability condition, it is difficult to treat the policy rule as the policy implementation guidelines. This paper purposes to derive the stability condition of a forward-looking Taylor rule...

The picture often painted is that foreign capital inflows in China and India are prominently linked to rapid growth at the national level, and contribute to widening income disparities at the provincial/state level. In this paper we revisit Krugman�s (1993) contention that foreign capital...

With the development of market-oriented economic reforms, Chinese monetary policy plays an important role in the world. The objective of this paper is to review the recent conduct of Chinese monetary policy and the central bank’s rule-based behavior in period 1994-2006 by estimating the...

The path to emerging as the world’s second largest economy (in PPP terms) has not been a smooth one. This paper seeks to provide a detailed chronology of China’s business cycles since 1979. It also considers whether their volatility has changed over time, and how their volatility compares...

The microfinance industry in Vietnam, particularly those sponsored by non-government organisations (NGOs), has experienced rapid expansion in recent years. While there have been anecdotal reports alluding to their contribution in alleviating poverty, a systematic analysis of this issue has been...