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This paper discusses some comparative analysis between the pattern of economic performances in Asia and Western Europe during 1950s-2020s through political economies perspective. The Asian and Western European economic performances are investigated through some stylized facts in the sense of economic factors. Three analyses are used to explain the general pattern of these regions. First, this study examines the pattern of GDP growth per capita during the 1950s-2020s, focusing on several countries in this region. Second, the analysis captures the pattern of linkages of economic variables in this region related to the principle of Circular and Cumulative causation (CCC) and contradiction. Third, the analysis employs a historical perspective underpinned by the results in the second analysis. This third analysis is crucial to appreciating Asia's global economic performance and also the process of Western deterioration phenomenon through long wave, including the occurrence recession and financial crises. The institutions of globalization and neoliberalism that put the power of capital promoted a financial crisis several times during the decades of 1980s-2020. The financial crisis is depicted by contradictions in the structural linkages among economic factors in Western Europe over the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research background: The globalization trend has inevitably enhanced the connectivity of global financial markets, making the cyclicality of financial activities and the spread of market imbalances have received widespread attention, especially after the global financial crisis. Purpose of the article: To reduce the negative effects of the contagiousness of the financial cycles, it is necessary to study the persistence of financial cycles and carve out the total connectedness, spillover paths, and sources of risks on a global scale. In addition, understanding the relationship between the financial cycle and economic development is an important way to prevent financial crises. Methods: This paper adopts the nonlinear smoothing transition autoregressive (STAR) model to extract cyclical and phase characteristics of financial cycles based on 24 countries during 1971Q1-2015Q4, covering developed and developing countries, the Americas, Europe, and Asia regions. In addition, the frequency connectedness approach is used to measure the connectedness of financial cycles and the relationship between the global financial cycle and the global economy. Findings & value added: The analysis reveals that aggregate financial cycles persist for 13.3 years for smoothed and 8.7 years for unsmoothed on average. The national financial cycles are asynchronous and exhibit more prolonged expansions and faster contractions. The connectedness of financial cycles is highly correlated with systemic crises and contributes to the persistence and harmfulness of shocks. It is mainly driven by short-term components and exhibits more pronounced interconnectedness within regions than across regions. During the financial crisis, the global financial cycle movements precede and are longer than the business fluctuations. Based on the study, some policy implications are presented. This paper emphasizes the impact of systemic crises on the persistence of financial cycles and their connectedness, which contributes to refining research related to the coping mechanisms of financial crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an informed commentary on the actual and potential impacts of the pandemic on financial markets, sector and centres, grounded in literature on financial centres, the state‐finance nexus, and trends affecting the landscape of finance since the global financial crisis. We expect a slowdown in new financial regulation, continued firm‐level consolidation, and a continued rise of business services related to finance. The application of new financial technologies is likely to accelerate, affecting retail banking in particular, but will not necessarily be led by FinTech firms. Local and regional financial centres are likely to face larger challenges than leading international centres. As the panic and partial recovery in financial markets in March and April 2020 highlighted the significance of the international monetary hierarchy, with the US$ in the lead, a radical shift of financial power to Asia seems unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The much studied 1999 big bang of Indonesian government decentralization was, in the end, relatively muted and quickly undone in forestry. This paper assesses the big bang as it relates to forestry. It reviews the extensive body of literature that was produced in the years immediately after the big bang occurred, as well as siting it in the longer sweep of Indonesian forestry history. The paper finds that there has been a long-term centralizing tendency in forestry governance, with nation-building and assertion of power over resources in the periphery being key centralizing forces. However, there are valid reasons for decentralized forestry management, such as improving rural development and respecting traditional rights through more accountable and responsive institutional arrangements. It is suggested here that a number of changing factors in Indonesia and in forestry could provide opportunities for a more enduring decentralization in forestry. These include strengthening democratic institutions, a declining role for natural forests in wood production as plantations replace supplies, and a shift to forms of governance built on systems thinking. For these reasons, it is suggested that the promises of decentralized forest governance might be delivered, not as a central government-ordained big bang, but rather as a progressive, paradigmatic evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberalism has not simply ‘survived’; it has failed to die, seemingly outlived the socio-economic conditions that gave rise to its existence. In this way, the non-death of neoliberalism raises some important questions about the nature of ideology, principally: its relationship to socio-economic determinants, how it exercises its grip over subjects and how this grip, or hold, can itself be exorcised. Seeking insights into these questions, this paper tells the story of the scholarly response to the non-death of neoliberalism over a ten-year period of crisis: a pre-crisis era beginning with the Asian financial crisis (1997–2007) and a post-crisis era beginning with the global financial crisis to the present day (2008–2015). The paper considers key scholarly responses to the persistence of neoliberalism at three fundamental levels: (a) the trajectory of their analytical technique, or the key concepts that underpin their wider project; (b) their critique of neoliberalism, or how these concepts render the construction of core neoliberal ideals; and (c) their ideological response to neoliberalism, or their recommendations regarding the pathway out of neoliberalism. On this basis, the paper engages in a discussion of the most plausible explanation for the non-death of neoliberalism and the most likely avenue along which the post-crisis world might build an escape. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that the relentless logic of commodification has served to undermine a key element of the social cement of contemporary capitalism: home ownership. In addressing this issue, the paper explores the development of the post war ‘social project’ of home ownership with particular reference to mature home ownership societies such as the USA, Japan, Britain and Australia. The paper then outlines the new fault lines and fractures which have emerged in post-crisis home ownership systems and the way in which a more vigorous, financialised private landlordism has emerged from the debris of the subprime meltdown. A key argument is that in a new and more intensified process of housing commodification, the social project promise of home ownership for a previous generation has shifted to a promise of private landlordism for current generations. In summary, the social project of Keynesian-embedded liberalism has been undermined by the economic project of neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Is the harmonization of financial regulatory regimes possible in East Asia? Focusing on corporate governance, which many see as a critical part of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and which is also seen as unresponsive to calls for change, this paper argues that such harmonization is possible, but that it will not be according to the standards advocated by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and other international organizations. At present, actors generally feign compliance with these international rules and standards. The pattern of noncompliance is reflective of two types of regulatory models at work in East Asia, which correspond to democratic and nondemocratic regimes. The manner by which these political institutions mediate the influence of key actors determines corporate governance outcomes. Three cases illustrate the key dynamics: Singapore (nondemocracy), South Korea (democracy), and pre- and post-World War II Japan (change from nondemocracy to democracy). By identifying the key actors that determine regulatory outcomes, this paper points to a more realistic regulatory framework. This alternative framework is a compromise between the standards advocated by international organizations and the domestic political realities of East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The rapid growth in international reserves accumulation in many emerging Asian economies has challenged economists with a puzzle and has revitalised the reserves adequacy literature recently. Recent works mostly focus on a large group of countries in trying to explain such behaviour. However, this paper aims to assess reserves adequacy for Thailand in particular. We see that taking into account the catastrophic impact of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the rapid development and worldwide integration of financial systems, the current high level of Thailand's reserves seems reasonable subject to some modifications in the traditional rules and theoretical approaches used in this paper to justify the reserves level in Thailand over the past decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been increasing concern about the roles of industrial variety, particularly related and unrelated variety, in adaptive response of regional economies to recessionary shock. Using South Korean regional manufacturing data around the 1997 Asian financial crisis, this paper investigates how differently related and unrelated variety affect intrasectoral and intersectoral structural change in regional economy. The empirical findings reveal that regions with higher related variety adapt to recessionary shock mainly through intrasectoral structural change, but that related variety diminishes the opportunity for regional economies to pursue intersectoral reorganization. However, unrelated variety makes up for this negative effect as it increases intersectoral structural change. This study sheds light on the complementary roles of related and unrelated variety in regional adaptability and path creation or diversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we aim to investigate the dynamic interdependence of international financial markets. Based on the data regarding daily returns of each market during the period 2006–2015 from Yahoo finance, we mainly focus on examining 27 markets from three continents, including Asia, America and Europe. By checking the dynamic interdependence between those markets, we find that markets from different continents have strong correlation at specific time shift. We also obtain that markets from different continents not only have a strong linkage with others at same day, but at a delay of one day, especially between Asia, Europe and Asia, America. In addition, we further analyze the time-varying influence strength between each two continents and observe that this value has abnormal changes during the financial crisis. These findings can provide us significant insights to understand the underlying dynamic interdependency of international financial markets and further help us make corresponding reasonable decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The increase of migrant workers into the Kingdom of Thailand began in the mid-1980s and early 1990s when Thailand was in transition from a low-end labour-intensive economy, to a capital-intensive one. The role of migrant workers became even more evident when Thailand encountered the economic crisis of the mid-1990s. Current statistics indicate that Thailand receives more than a million migrant workers from neighbouring countries, including Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia. This paper traces the five stages of the Royal Thai Government's (RTG) policies to managing cross-border migration and migrant worker issues in Thailand. It argues that despite the introduction of policies of management of the issue, migrant workers are vulnerable to human trafficking. Furthermore, as more often than not migrant workers are irregular migrants, they are treated as a risk to national security. As such they are vulnerable to labour exploitation. This paper analyses the problems in policy and legal enforcement between countries of origin and the RTG, suggesting ways in which these problems can be overcome to ensure compliance with international norms, and thus the responsibility of the RTG to its 'foreign workers'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the better part of the last century, the debate between 'liberalisers' and 'interventionists' marked thinking about the relationship between finance and development. It has by now been superseded by the emergence of the discourse of financial system development, which links economic growth to the development of the financial sector. As the risks entailed by wholesale financial reform came to the fore in the financial crises of the 1990s and early 2000s, emphasis shifted from liberalising financial markets to building institutional frameworks to accommodate investment. Arguably, the emergence of the financial-system-development discourse occurred within a wider shift in the neoliberal paradigm towards institution building. These changes are particularly pronounced in East and Southeast Asia. This paper argues that a convergence of opinions has occurred between Asian financial policy elites, previously strong supporters of the bank-based developmental state model, and the liberalisers, represented through international financial institutions such as the IMF. This consensus is geared towards the expansion of capital markets and a generally more neoliberal, market-oriented mode of economic governance. To illustrate this claim, this paper traces institutional changes in Asian financial systems since the 1997-98 financial crisis. Although local characteristics remain, a common feature is the more salient role of bond markets in the financial system. This is the result of the conscious and deliberate development of local currency debt markets by policymakers. However, the new consensus narrows down the space in which economic policymaking takes place. Yet, by re-politicising financial system development, this space could be broadened again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines three controversies that revolve around the Hong Kong government's efforts to privatise components of its property assets in the years following the Asian financial crisis in 1997. While the rolling back of welfare and privatisation of public goods are typical features of the 'neo-liberal turn', the consequences of and responses to these processes are highly contingent upon specific historical experience and social practices. By examining the narratives of different actors over the course of these controversies, this paper aims to elucidate the contradictions and mutual entanglements between the ideology of neo-liberalism and everyday discourse and how the contestation in each of the three cases worked to reshape and ultimately to preserve the existing regime of legitimation. It also illustrates how the long-running 'laissez-faire' principles of Hong Kong's colonial period have contributed to the ongoing absorption of political critique, thus exposing the limits of 'people power'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decade after the Asian financial and economic crisis, assessments can be made about the varying capacities of different political regimes to withstand economic shocks. This paper shows that Malaysia's hybrid approach to authoritarianism has been most resilient, Indonesia's harder authoritarian rule was most brittle, and Thailand's democratic politics displayed an intermediate level of sturdiness, hence delaying - but not preventing - their breakdown. However, this paper argues also that in trying to explain these varying amounts of resilience, it is not enough to examine the institutions and procedures of which regimes are composed. Instead, in taking a political economy approach, attention is given to prior patterns of capital ownership involving the state, indigenous tycoons, ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs and foreign investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the conceptual complexity of central bankers on exchange rate volatility during the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s. Theoretically, this paper develops a framework to study the cognitive style of individual central bankers in conjunction with the institutional features of the central banks they head. The paper also controls for a variety of other common explanations for exchange rate volatility during this time period, including the number of veto players representing the political system and underlying structural features of the Asian economies. Empirically, the cross-sectional time-series analysis finds that more conceptually complex central bankers were able to reduce exchange rate volatility during the crisis years, especially when they inhabited highly independent central banks. This paper concludes that linking the study of key individuals to macroeconomic outcomes in the global political economy is a promising area of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asia's growing share of the global economy provides one of the strongest themes in contemporary analysis of international affairs. The remarkable economic achievements of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan over the past 50 years have been compounded more recently by the rise of the Chinese and Indian economies. While the significance of this change in the way international wealth is shared was beyond doubt before the onset of the current global financial crisis, many commentators expect that when the world eventually emerges from the crisis Asia's share of the global economy will have grown even further. This shift clearly has strategic importance: economic decisions made in Asia, whether by governments or business, are now more important for the rest of the world than they have been for centuries. If military power were moving in the same direction, and at the same pace, the strategic consequences would be even greater. This paper examines trends in Asian military spending and modernisation. It begins with a summary of defence spending among Asian countries.1 It next considers the nature of the capabilities and equipment they are acquiring, and comments on the way in which forces are being structured, commanded, and managed. It then comments on the range of different factors that are driving military spending and modernisation in Asia, and offers particular comment on China in this regard. The paper then concludes with brief comments on United States and Australian military spending and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has fueled the engine of growth of the Malaysian economy since the early 1970s. Most literature in the area of FDI uses Dunning's eclectic paradigm to explain the who, where, and how of FDI. However, these explanations are inadequate to explain the timing (or when) of FDI, especially during periods of uncertainty. Recent work on FDI introduces two further factors to explain the behavior of foreign investors during times of uncertainty, namely, reversibility and delayability. This paper utilizes these two additional factors to explain the behavior of potential foreign investors. Employing data obtained from the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA), the paper analyzes the changing nature of sectoral FDI and links this to the reversibility and delayability factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a political economy approach in evaluating the state's role in investment promotion. Using the Asian financial crisis as an opportunity to study regulatory mechanisms, the paper examines both state-society relations as well as relations between Singapore and its neighbours, Indonesia and Malaysia. The difficult policies which Singapore enacted during the crisis—namely, a wage-cut as well as the drive to recruit foreign skilled labour in the midst of a depressed economy--cannot be understood except in terms of an institutional context involving agencies, interest-groups and segments of society and the state's continuing ideological work and, specifically, within an embedded autonomy position where the state was able to fend off lobbying efforts while at the same time using its position with the unions to push for wage-cuts and skilled foreign labour. Such embedding or nestedness was also apparent in Singapore's regional relations. The incorporation of the Riau islands in Indonesia in sub-regional production networks managed by Singapore led to consistent stances taken by Singapore and Indonesian regional authorities to protect investments, in the midst of inconsistent signals between the national governments of the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has been considerable commentary and analysis on the origins and aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis there have been few studies which focus on the housing markets of the countries most directly affected. This is surprising given the importance of housing investment in many Asian economies and that over-inflated real estate was deeply implicated in the crisis. This paper explores the particular dynamics of the Hong Kong housing market and its institutional structure during the Asian Financial Crisis. The paper focuses specifically on the relationship between the development structure and the shaping of the policy process and on the interconnections between the housing market and the wider economy. It explains the apparent resilience of the giant developers during the crisis. More generally, the paper emphasises the importance of endogenous institutional dynamics in mediating the impact of the crisis in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the emerging evidence relating to the origins and aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and its implications for the regulation of the short-term capital account. First, it suggests that the evidence supports an interpretation of the crisis as arising from the inherent instability of short-term, highly liquid capital markets rather than one which focuses solely on common, fundamental weaknesses in the most affected economies. Second, the paper argues that the balance between the state and international and domestic capital is changing as a result of the crisis and that accelerated liberalization and deregulation further weaken the ability of the nation-state to pursue specific development objectives. Given that the nationstate remains the locus of development efforts, liberalization of capital account transactions poses serious problems for policy-makers, with no clear consensus as to the extent of the costs and benefits of alternative policy options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opposition to neoliberal globalisation has been especially intense since the Asian crisis. This paper assesses three responses to the crisis: a broad localist reaction in Thailand, and the approaches adopted by two major Asian-based organisations, the Third World Network (TWN) and the Focus on the Global South. The discussion of these approaches focuses on the issues of nationalism and populism; dependency; industrialisation and the state; and liberalisation, international institutions, and local society. Their critiques range from the conservative populism of the localists, to reformism of TWN, and to the more radical “deglobalisation” approach of the Focus group. However, none have been able to free themselves of the influence of dependency models. Their populism and “progressive nationalism” prevents an accurate location of the causes of exploitation in capitalist processes. This paper questions whether the national-global dichotomy of these approaches is an adequate way to conceptualise capitalist production and exploitation in the era of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of International Monetary Fund (IMF) policy announcements on financial markets worldwide. We investigate reactions from stock, bond, foreign exchange and futures markets and banking and financial companies during the Asian crisis. We explore the impact of IMF bailouts not only on crisis countries, but also on main creditor countries. We study the impact of local governments’ and public responses in crisis countries to account for interaction between the IMF and local parties. We show IMF involvement and local governments’ co-operation actually helps crisis countries but not creditors. We show that in crisis countries, financial markets generally react unfavourably to their governments’ initial demands for IMF assistance, while compliance of the crisis countries with the IMF policy action is commonly perceived as good news. Financial markets in crisis countries react negatively to prolonged negotiations and government actions against IMF policy. Creditor countries’ financial markets are not responsive to IMF actions in crisis countries. We discuss policy implications of findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Introduces a series of papers discussing the economic conditions in Asia, with emphasis on the financial crisis. Presentation of the papers at a research seminar organized by the Network for Pacific-Asia Studies, in January, 1998; Themes which arose from the papers; Information on the papers.

This paper begins with a commentary on the unfolding of the Asian crisis, and includes summary information on the effect of the crisis on the rote of economic growth and unemployment in the region. A review of current thinking on the causes of the crisis follows. This review evaluates whether the Asian crisis was caused primarily by weaknesses in the affected economies, such as inappropriate exchange rote policies and inadequate financial regulation, or by international market failures. The paper concludes with a critical analysis of the International Monetary Fund's role in the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a political-economy analysis of the Asian financial crisis, with a focus on the economies of Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. It explains why the crisis affected each of these countries differently and why the responses to the crisis differ between governments. The paper argues that banking crises need not necessarily lead to currency crises. In particular, it provides an argument that, despite its banking crisis. Korea should have avoided a currency crisis because its economic fundamentals were fundamentally sound. That it failed to do so was due to the inertia of the previous government and IMF policies, which have the support of the current government because they are consistent with its political imperative. This paper also examines the roles played by the United States, Japan and China, which are the key regional players in the region, in the crisis. It argues that the behaviour of the key regional players was very much dictated by their domestic and international agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the expanding financial turmoil that has been triggered by the Asian crisis. It examines the factors behind the crisis, its impact on African countries and the main lessons and policy implications for African countries. The onset of the Asian crisis seems to have taken everybody by surprise because the Asian countries that were hit by the crisis had been among the most successful in sustaining high rates of economic growth, keeping high saving and investment rates and improving the quality of life of their citizens. However, the emerging consensus is that the Asian crisis is a hybrid of structural and policy distortions (macro- and micro-economic) in the affected economies. The impact of the crisis on African countries was mainly transmitted through declines in export prices and volumes. The low demand for primary commodities induced by the crisis and the large depreciation of Asian currencies appear to have played major roles in depressing commodity prices. With only a few exceptions, the commodities that suffered large price declines are those for which Asia constitutes an important market (e.g. oil) and/or those mostly supplied by Asian countries (e.g. copper, timber and rubber). Africa's oil-exporting countries, which experienced large deterioration in their terms of trade, were the most affected. For the continent as a whole, export proceeds declined by 9.5 per cent between 1997 and 1998. This was the product of a 7 per cent decline in export prices and a 2.5 per cent decline in the volume of exports. The paper estimates that the crisis has caused the growth rate in the region to slide down by 1.2 percentage points, which indicates a loss of US $6.2 billion using aggregate GDP for 1997 as the base. To put this in an order of magnitude, it is about US $2 billion higher than the annual average flow of FDI to the continent in recent years. For the majority of African countries where the inflow of private capital is small and where pub... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Asian financial regionalism was born in response to the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–1998. The centrepiece of financial regionalism was the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), an emergency liquidity mechanism created by the ASEAN+3. It embodied both a clear interpretation of what had gone wrong in 1997–1998 and an understanding of the need for institutions that would be politically viable despite Sino-Japanese rivalry. Enforcement under CMI relied on the ‘IMF link’ – release of funds would be predicated on crisis countries' initiating negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as a means of reducing moral hazard, enforcing conditionality and diverting blame from the leading creditors, Japan and China. The global financial crisis of 2008–2010 and the eurozone crisis that followed have inspired important changes meant to address CMI's economic gaps, including accelerated adoption of ‘CMI Multilateralization’ (CMIM), the creation of a new surveillance unit (ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Organization, or AMRO), and the establishment of a new precautionary line. Many observers have remarked that these developments weaken the IMF link, which had effectively subordinated CMI to the IMF. While the moves appear to demonstrate a more confident, autonomous regionalism and a relative devaluation of the US-dominated global financial institutions, this paper argues that in fact, the ASEAN+3 states have again unearthed the underlying politics of divided leadership and mutual suspicion. CMIM is now threatened by the renewed potential for internal divisions. Further complicating the picture, both China and Japan have recently established large bilateral swap lines outside of the CMIM framework with several of their ASEAN+3 partners, raising the question of whether CMIM is moving towards political irrelevance even as it has arrived at a high water mark in its institutional development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the late 1990s, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has widened policy-making to include civil society organisations (CSOs), paralleling developments in other regional and global governance institutions where the inclusion of CSOs in policy-making is considered necessary to address these institutions’ ‘democracy deficit’. A rich empirical literature documents this trend, highlighting the range of participatory mechanisms and their challenges. However, theoretical explanations for why governance institutions engage CSOs and the limitations of these processes are lacking. This paper harnesses political economy analysis to explain this trend. Examining the form and function of civil society engagement in ASEAN, this article demonstrates that ASEAN's inclusion of civil society functions in legitimating its market-building reform programme, while its participatory mechanisms are structured to include amenable interests and marginalise non-compatible groups. Thus, ASEAN's engagement of CSOs and the broader trend of participatory policy-making should be considered as creating sites for contestation, rather than being implicitly democratising. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most studies of financial crises focus on the impact on states, and the states’ responses. Few, if any, have focused on how these crises affect communities within the state which do not have control of the state apparatus. These groups, left out of decision-making processes and calculations by the state, suffer the most. In pre-war British Malaya and Malaysia, these groups were the Chinese overseas, Indians and some Malay minorities. A study of the impacts of the Great Depression and the Asian Financial Crisis on the Chinese overseas may help to illustrate how such groups, left on their own, coped with such crises. A study of the Chinese overseas is not insignificant because the community wielded considerable economic influence in the 1930s and in 1997. This paper argues that despite the obvious differences in circumstances, there are common threads to the narratives of both crises. These include the roles played by exchange rates and banking institutions which the Malayan Chinese helped to establish in the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the reform trajectory of financial supervision in South Korea after the 1980s, focusing on external and internal political–economic factors. Research results indicate that the changed economic landscape led the government, which once utilized financial supervision as a tool to support industrial policy, to alter its aims and pursue the development of the financial market itself. During this transformational process, the 1997 Asian financial crisis functioned as a powerful stimulus for the reform of the previous supervisory system. The process was also marked by social actors’ efforts to affect related policies and the government’s efforts to control the reform process, as well as confrontations between organizations that supported contradictory reform plans. A multi-strategy approach including in-depth interviews with a senior staff member from a government financial regulatory agency, literature reviews, and secondary data collection, was adopted in order to enhance the validity and reliability of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, one driver behind the promotion of home ownership in Western countries has been the belief that owner-occupied housing assets provide a means to build up individual welfare security, potentially offsetting pension shortfalls in retirement. In contrast, many developed East Asian societies have both long focussed on advancing ‘asset’ or ‘property-based welfare’ systems as well as experienced the late-1990s Asian Financial Crisis which forced changes in housing and welfare practices. This paper examines how home ownership and asset-based welfare fared in these contexts and the lessons to be learned. It begins by considering the role of owner-occupied housing assets in different welfare regimes before empirically examining how asset-based welfare systems have been realized. It then considers how East Asian home ownership and asset-based welfare systems have stood-up to economic crises. The final section considers what the East Asian experiences contribute to an understanding of the housing assets–welfare relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Harry. M. Markowitz published "Portfolio Selection" 1952, financial academicians have proposed many methods to measure risk such as variant, downside-variant, average absolute deviation, maximum deviation, VaR and so on. However, these methods have a. common limitation. It is that they only consider the price moment. Because they don't consider the influence of exchange quantity, they can't effectively keep away the risk caused by unexpected event such as Southeast Asia financial crisis 1997 and recent global financial tsunami. In this paper, a new method of measuring risk which called time-varying risk has proposed. The goal of this method is to respond the usual risk as well as the risk caused by unexpected event. The time-varying risk is a kind of variable with time, not a constant, which is identical to people's sense to risk, so it has significant meaning to practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the political opportunity structures which facilitated the creation of sites of interaction and protest against the Asian Development Bank during the Bank's Annual General Meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2000. The factors which facilitated the coming together of Thai social movements and their regional and international counterparts are mainly their shared critique of the neo-liberal paradigm and its adverse effects on their respective countries. The strategies they used to highlight these effects enhanced their sites of engagement and confrontation with the Bank and included dialogue with Bank officials, demonstrations, and the use of the media to highlight their concerns. Importance was also placed on the manner in which they were able to mobilize resources for the anti-Asian Development Bank campaigns and the process by which they framed their issues to gain the sympathy and support of the public. The 1997 Asian financial crisis, which highlighted the shortcomings of the Bank's development paradigm, as well as the ongoing democratization process in Thailand during that period, provided the impetus in fostering the anti-globalization alliances of local and transnational social movements in a common venue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

South Korea has witnessed remarkable economic development since the 1960s. Its economic growth rate has few parallels. However, behind this facade of growth and progress, a chronic housing shortage in the capital region, declining owner-occupation, rising housing costs, and polarisation in housing conditions between the better-off and the worse-off clearly illustrate the increasing impasse and crisis in housing that Korea has faced. The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the more recent global financial crisis shocked the Korean housing market. Immediately after each crisis, the housing market experienced a serious recession and a sharp drop in prices. This paper addresses the seriousness of the impact of the financial crises on Korean housing conditions and how the Korean government reacted to the housing crises. It also discusses the benchmarks over the years and how pressing exigencies in the last decade have led to dramatic transformations in housing policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Asia Pacific region, and in particular East Asia, underwent rapid urbanisation and industrialisation in the latter decades of the twentieth century. Central to this transformation was intensive public and private investment in the housing sector. Although housing was largely commodified, public subsidies and state policy directives were particularly intense. In the twenty-first century however, the landscape of housing policy has shifted. While the 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis marked a watershed in economic conditions, other social, political and demographic changes have also subsequently come to bare. In recent years, housing affordability has become a core issue, and a focus of housing interventions, in most Asia Pacific societies as the efficacy of previous housing policies diminished and economic contexts changed. Housing market volatility has in many countries become the norm and economic growth, turbulent. The housing needs of low-income households have become increasingly exigent influencing considerable realignment in policy agendas among traditionally development focused and, often, authoritarian governments. This introduction to this special issue examines changes in Asia Pacific housing contexts with specific reference to recent economic crises as well as key political and socioeconomic developments. The articles in this issue - mostly country specific, but with one comparative paper - provide varied insights into how diverse urban, political and socioeconomic situations are shaping, and being shaped by, housing systems and housing policy responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite diversity in market and policy frameworks, late twentieth century housing systems across industrialised economies in East Asia became increasingly focused on facilitating home ownership. Governments became characteristically interventionist in the housing sector, which was assumed to play broad economic, political and welfare roles. Despite the influence of the public sector, housing provision was largely commodified rather than de-commodified. Home ownership was perceived to enhance economic development, social solidarity and the asset base of family centred welfare provision. This view was bolstered by house price increases during an era of rapid economic growth. Expanding owner-occupied housing sectors ostensibly offset underdeveloped citizenship rights and public spending, and stimulated increases in middle-class home-owning households, who were provided an economic stake in 'developmentalist' government objectives. The Asian Economic Crisis of 1997/98 however, strongly impacted on property markets across the region leading to increasing divergence in approaches to home ownership and welfare provision. This paper examines housing systems and policy regimes in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong to illustrate new strategies that have emerged in the twenty-first century that reflect diversifying orientations towards housing policies and property-based welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indonesia experienced a deep economic contraction as a result of the 1997-1998 Asian crisis. This paper develops an analytical framework that facilitates an examination of trends and patterns in the country's industrial sector in the wake of the crisis, and explains why it appears to be on a lower growth trajectory. We particularly focus on why industrialisation has become less employment elastic; why industrial exports have performed indifferently; and why the process of small firms 'graduating' to larger units has slowed, and most of the output growth is now coming from existing firms rather than new entrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the 1997 Asian financial crisis suggest that impacts of economic shocks on education are ambiguous and vary according to gender, income and location. The crisis exacerbated previous disparities, with gaps between girls and boys, and urban and rural education widening. Secondary school enrolment sustained the greatest impact. Countries' high commitment to education, as evidenced by increased household expenditures and government social protection programmes, helped protect education. Lessons from 1997 serve as a useful framework for considering potential policy responses to the 2007-08 crisis. Getting policies right is important given the current education landscape, where disparities continue to persist. The paper provides an analysis of the state of education in East Asia and the Pacific. It then analyzes experiences from the 1997 crisis and government policy responses since 1997. It argues that quick and sustained action is important. Social protection measures should be institutionalized to prepare for future crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents evidence on the context, magnitude, and probable macroeconomic impacts of the privatization of Chinese urban housing in the 1998-1999 period. Various sources suggest that approximately one half of urban housing stocks were sold by work units to their residents at prices likely between one-fifth and four-fifths of their fair value during the period in question. This transaction significantly increased the wealth of urban Chinese households and improved the cash flows of state-owned enterprises. The case demonstrates the reaction of Chinese economic policymaking to economic stresses, and the capacity of the Chinese state to manage the business cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]