Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: M. Govinda Rao, NIPFP
India’s economy was one of the earliest to stage a turnaround after the global financial crisis.
The decisions taken in early 2008 to increase public-sector wages, forgive loans for farmers who had borrowed from the banks, and massively expand the rural-employment guarantee scheme assisted the economy before the global financial crisis unfolded in the last quarter of the year. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
As Europe continues its desperate struggle to salvage the euro and monetary union, the spotlight of regional cooperation is shifting to Asia.
In December, European leaders retro-fitted the union with fiscal disciplines which impose binding limits on national budgets and borrowing. All but Britain opted in; the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron argued, was not prepared to yield such fiscal sovereignty. Read more…
Author: Arief Ramayandi, ADB
The slow resolution of the European debt crisis has evolved into a liquidity problem which threatens the global financial system.
And these long-drawn-out efforts to address the sovereign debt problems have heightened uncertainties about resolving the crisis and induced speculative activities, threatening the survival of many European banks. Read more…
Author: Joel Rathus, ANU
The global financial crisis forced East Asian nations to get serious about regional architecture.
As global trade entered a precarious decline during the height of the crisis in 2008–09, one of the obvious areas of focus for East Asia was trade regionalism, aimed at making East Asia a more efficient production network and, over time, a final market in its own right. Read more…
Author: Andrew Elek, ANU
The 2008 global financial crisis catalysed a long-overdue transformation in the oversight of global affairs, bringing large emerging Asian economies to the G20 table.
A transition in the role of Asian countries at the G20 — from cautious and sometimes defensive to visionary and exemplary — was expected to unfold slowly, possibly taking a decade or more. Read more…
Author: Stephen Howes, ANU
The founding institution within the World Bank Group is the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).
The only part of the institution that was established by the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, the IBRD is the World Bank’s bank. Read more…
Author: Mohsin Khan, Peterson Institute for Economic Governance
Asia is in a strong position to assert itself in global financial governance.
The remarkable growth of the economies in the region and their integration in global trade and finance bestow upon Asian states considerable potential clout in international forums and institutions. Read more…
Author: Pravakar Sahoo, IEG
The Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s remarks at the launch of the World Bank Development Committee meeting recently expressed the concerns of emerging economies about the European debt crisis.
If not managed with an iron hand, the crisis will have a contagion effect and lead to a double-dip recession in the world economy. Read more…
Author: Peter Warr, ANU
Since the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98, the countries of East Asia have, in aggregate, run huge annual current account surpluses.
The counterparts of these surpluses, including Europe and the US, have been correspondingly huge current account deficits. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, EAF
In East Asia, as elsewhere in the world, the risks that we continue to face in recovery from the global financial crisis, economically and politically, are a consequence not only of failure in national governance but also in the architecture of international governance, including regional architecture.
Failures that frustrated a coherent East Asian and international response to the big problems of the day (including payments imbalances, financial market reform, trade and exchange rate issues) in their global context. Read more…
Author: Lex Rieffel, Brookings Institution
In a primer on sovereign debt restructuring published eight years ago, I noted that ‘None of the mature democracies in the world have come close to a sovereign default in the Bretton Woods era’.
What was true then is not true now, and the world is worse off because of it. Read more…
Authors: Jane Golley and Ligang Song, ANU
The first three decades of the 21st century are almost certain to bring with them the completion of China’s rise on to the global economic, political and geopolitical stage.
The Chinese economy has contributed positively to world economic growth for decades, with a pivotal role during the global financial crisis (GFC). Read more…
Author: Jonathan D. Ostry, IMF
The debate over how to manage capital flows to emerging market economies ebbs and flows, much like the flows themselves.
But, it’s a hot topic in the news again for good reason. Short-term fluctuations in capital flows are occurring against the backdrop of a structural trend increase. Investors have woken up to the higher risk-adjusted returns these economies are likely to continue to offer. Read more…
Author: Cyn-Young Park, ADB
The global financial crisis has prompted a wide range of policy responses and long-overdue reform initiatives, implemented by an unprecedented degree of intergovernmental policy coordination to build a collective response — not just between large, advanced economies but with strong participation from emerging market economies, too.
The world economy has turned a corner, but the challenges it faces remain daunting. Read more…
Author: Max Corden, University of Melbourne
People critical of global imbalances often blame the surplus countries and their currency manipulation. This column introduces a Policy Insight that argues that the basic problem has been the inefficiency of the world’s financial sector, which led to unfruitful investment in the US rather than productive investment in emerging economies.
The global imbalances are widely seen as a problem, especially by the US government and US economists. Read more…