There is a strong presumption among economists that domestic reforms are promoted by regionalism. Yet strong empirical evidence for this proposition is lacking. This paper examines both the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on this issue, drawing on the relevant economic, political,...

This paper summarizes unprecedented adverse health and economic impacts as well as policy responses in the Asia and Pacific region and the rest of the world generated by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020. By the end of 2020, over 80 million people had been infected, with...

As the world's second and third largest economies, both the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Japan are facing the challenge of energy insecurity. To meet this challenge, both countries are adopting and enhancing renewable energy policy. This research tries to compare the two countries'...

Based on the variable rate of gross domestic product per capita growth and its sources, this paper first identifies five phases of economic development that are common to China, Japan, and Korea: M (Malthusian), G (government-led), K (à la Kuznets), H (human capital based) and PD (post...

This essay provides a game-theoretic, endogenous view of institutions, and then applies the idea to identify the sources of institutional trajectories of economic development in China, Japan, and Korea. It stylizes the Malthusian-phase of East Asian economies as peasant-based economies in which...

Economists often identify a reduction in the share of agricultural employment as a quantitative indication of the economic growth of nations. But this process did not occur in earnest in the People's Republic of China until the 1980s and to some extent in Japan until well into the mid-20th...

People's trust in state and political institutions is a key foundation of a well-functioning economy. We estimate the impact of direct elections on people's trust in state and political institutions, using a major political reform in Indonesia as the source of exogenous variation. Prior to 2005,...

It has taken two crises - the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 and the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 - for the international community to seriously focus on the reform of the international financial architecture for crisis prevention, management and resolution. Facing the global...

In the last decade, East Asia has engaged in constructing numerous mechanisms to enhance regional cooperation in the areas of trade and finance. However, the region's economic architecture exhibits certain idiosyncrasies such as an eclectic institutional structure and a limited level of...

This paper discusses the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM); its origin, development and future outlook. It puts forward a number of proposals to make the liquidity support role of the CMIM more effective. It is further argued that the CMIM can bring about major changes to the...