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…
Author: Ross Garnaut, ANU and University of Melbourne
Human induced climate change is a global problem and an effective solution requires large mitigation contributions from all major developed and developing countries, and from the rest of the world too.
The search for effective climate change policy is partly a search for effective cooperation amongst countries of a kind and dimension that has never previously been known on a global scale. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU
The G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting in Paris over the weekend clinched a deal on the indicators that will be used to evaluate and to tackle the economic imbalances, said to be at the heart of managing recovery from the global crisis.
Importantly, China signed on to the deal, the announcement of which reports that trade balance and investment flows will be monitored ‘taking due consideration of exchange rate, fiscal, monetary and other policies.’ Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU
China’s emergence as the second largest economy in the world, and on some reckoning an economy that is already nudging America for the top spot, inevitably raises questions about how this remarkable and rapid shift in world power will affect the global economic order as we know it and what role China can now be expected to, and will, play in running the world economy.
At the end of the Second World War, the United States bequeathed the GATT, IMF and World Bank-based international system and assumed leadership in establishing the rules and norms in running the global economy. Read more…
Author: Andrew Sheng, University of Malaya and Tsinghua University
There are a lot of global architecture, theoretical, and micro-institutional incentives issues that Asia must address in the wake of the GFC.
Conventional wisdom is not helping to solve the dilemma of a global market that is still regulated at national levels. Read more…
Author: Thee Kian Wie, LIPI, Jakarta
The Indonesian economy continued to grow strongly at 5.8 per cent (yoy) during the third quarter of 2010, which was slightly lower than during the second quarter of the year when growth reached 6.2 per cent.
The slightly lower growth during the third quarter of 2010 was due to the unusual weather conditions caused by continuous rains. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU
Like China, India emerged largely unscathed from the impact of global financial meltdown to grow at an impressive 6.7 per cent in 2008-09.
This was a performance that ranked second only to China’s: although lower than the 9 per cent growth achieved in the three years immediately before. Read more…
Author: Andrew Low, RedBridge Grant Samuel
It has now become conventional wisdom in Australia to observe that the growth of China and, to a lesser extent, other countries in Asia rescued our economy from a likely recession after the global financial crisis. While a sound banking system and proactive fiscal and monetary response were also important, Australia was fortunate to be the most proximate and efficient quarry for commodity-hungry capital investment in the region.
There is, however, a danger that Australia’s good fortune in having good customers and terms of trade might lead it to overlook the other fundamental changes going on in the region. Read more…
Author: Gary Hawke, NZIER
At home, New Zealand marked time in 2010. Public commentary remained dominated by apprehension about the international economy. The Governor of the Reserve Bank published a memoir about the very reasonable worries over what could have happened but didn’t. The financial crisis in Europe and North America, which triggered a trade crisis in Asia, ultimately had only a moderate impact in New Zealand, which was also true for much of Asia. New Zealand’s insecurity is due to investment exceeding national saving and that is domestically driven.
After 24 years of sound government accounts, government expenditure has been allowed to exceed revenue and this is expected to continue for some time. This is partly attributable to the government’s response to the global financial crisis but more much to decay of the effective expenditure control, which was one of the least-heralded but most important of New Zealand’s economic reforms in the eighties. Read more…
Author: Mukul G. Asher, NUS, Singapore
The 2008 global crisis and its aftermath have not adversely impacted Singapore’s medium term growth performance. After only 1.4 per cent growth in 2008, and negative 2.0 per cent growth in 2009, the economy rebounded strongly in 2010, with the most recent projected growth rate of 14.8 per cent. The cyclical upturn in the global demand has been a major factor in the strong rebound in 2010 with goods producing sectors, including electronics manufacturing, being the largest contributor.
The services sector was aided by the commencement of casinos during 2010. This is reflected in the projected S$300 million in collections from levy on Singapore residents who visit casinos. The projections are that Singapore’s gambling market could exceed that of Las Vegas by end 2011. Read more…
