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This paper seeks to answer two questions: (1) Is it still useful to think in terms of an East Asian Welfare Model (EAWM)? (2) Is it still helpful to characterize East Asian social policy as 'productive'? In relation to (1) the paper explores the value of the EAWM concept and why the idea has gained wide currency. It looks at the strengths and weaknesses of the concept. In relation to (2) the paper analyses the notion of 'productivism' as set out by Holliday. It then reviews recent developments in social policy in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan to assess the significance of those changes. It argues that Korea is the test case for the productivist thesis. The paper's conclusion is that it may be more useful now to see these four societies as making up two clusters. Hong Kong and Singapore are still essentially productivist in their orientation. In contrast, there has been more change in Taiwan and even more change in Korea. Korea now seems more of a welfare hybrid than a clear example of productivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both financial market deregulation and global external imbalance feature prominently among the potential causes of the 2008 global financial crisis, but they have been largely examined separately. In this paper, we take a different angle and investigate the relationship between financial market regulation and current account imbalances, an area for which limited empirical evidence exists. Using a large data set that includes 66 developed and emerging and other developing countries and a fixed effects identification strategy. We find robust and consistent evidence that countries employing significant repressive financial policies are more likely to run current account surpluses. Specifically, interest rate controls, state ownership in the banking sector and capital account controls are the main policies contributing to external imbalances. Analysis of possible mechanisms confirm that financial repression mainly affects external imbalances through its effect on industrial structure. Furthermore, financial repression has a larger effect on the current account in East Asia than the rest of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yeung H. W.-C. Regional development and the competitive dynamics of global production networks: an East Asian perspective, Regional Studies. The debate on the nature and dynamics of regional development in both academic and policy circles has now moved on from the earlier focus on endogenous regional assets to analysing the complex relationship between globalization and regional change. This position paper attempts to engage with this debate through the experience of regional development in East Asia. The paper shows that regional development cannot be understood independently of the changing dynamics of global production networks. While the existing literature on East Asia tends to focus on the state as the key driver of economic development at the national and regional levels, it is argued that the developmental state is a necessary but not sufficient condition for regional development to take place. Instead, one needs to study the complex strategic coupling of those economic actors, particularly large business firms, operating in specific regions in Asia with their lead firm counterparts orchestrating production networks on a global basis... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many developing countries have recently adopted a swathe of development strategies ranging from extremely selective to non-discretionary, functional policies – some if not all of which constitute what we may term 'industrial policy'. The collection provides an overview on the state of the art about new industrial policy and the place of politics in contemporary analysis of state intervention in the global political economy. This introduction revisits the importance of state-backed economic policies not simply as a reaction to the limitations of market reforms implemented in the 1980s and 1990s, but as a radically new development strategy moving on to the twenty-first century. The task of the paper is two-fold: first, it maps out the lessons from East Asian industrial policy and demonstrates how a new generation of political economy scholars have brought in a more political approach to industrialisation; and second, it synthesises the political economy literature to build a framework that incorporates new aspects of industrial policy, notably on the significance of economic linkages and rent management as a way of addressing global value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Chinese foreign policy has long shown that domestic politics and domestic constraints are sources of foreign policy, albeit generally considered less potent than ideology and interests. Domestic political constraints should also be explored as factors in Chinese regional policies toward East Asia, including regional economic institutions. This paper examines three domestic institutional constraints on regional foreign policy in the area of trade and economics: a fragmented decision-making structure that has difficulty with coordination, a relatively heavy reliance on top level decision-makers at a time when issues of Asian economic policy have relatively low priority for these same decision-makers, and the relatively extreme lack of autonomy for negotiators vis-a-vis top decision-makers in Beijing. These constraints are by any means unique to China. However, at a time when many observers and participants are expecting—indeed, often hoping for—Chinese leadership in the region, the paper posits that these constraints hinder the PRC's ability to fill this role. The key empirical focus is regional trade agreements and regional economic organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan has been referred to by the World Bank as one of the East Asia's "economic miracles". Many quantitative models on Taiwan's economic growth have been conducted by neo-classical mainstream economists. However, none of them investigates in detail the thinking of those policy-makers who work behind the economic success of Taiwan. Li Kuo-Ting is generally regarded as the architect of Taiwan's economic "miracle". In this paper, an evolutionary perspective has been used to understand the economic management of Li Kuo-Ting in particular and the learning government in Taiwan in general. It will be argued that a policy change is a matter of learning, experimenting, and a process of trial and error, involving subjective aspects such as the policy-makers' perception, vision and experiences, and objective factors such as environmental, geographical or international constraints. Furthermore, Taiwan has been able to succeed because its policy-makers are willing to learn and unlearn. Though the right policy has not always been adopted, Taiwan's policy-makers are willing to experiment with a new policy in a pragmatic way. Policies that did not work were either modified or abandoned. Policies that did work were adopted. This paper concludes that Taiwan's economic "miracle" has been the result of a long-term evolutionary process of entrepreneurial vision by the government, careful policy experimentation and market selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an integrated set of 4Cs indices, namely, centrality index, competition index, congestion index and concentration index to examine network effects in the East Asia container port industry. Empirical analysis confirms that larger ports enjoy greater direct network effects related to economies of scale, whereas, smaller ports leverage on indirect network effects to widen their scopes of influence to attract vessel calls. Ports tend to engage in more competitive interactions with their counterparts within the same region, even though cooperative relationships among ports across regions are beneficial. In the light of the empirical results, the paper proceeds to explain some important managerial and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines economic regionalism in East Asia with a focus on the key issues in harmonizing bilateral free trade agreements. The ASEAN+1 free trade agreements with China, South Korea and Japan represent the first attempts to structure cooperation in trade across Southeast and Northeast Asia. It is therefore important to examine the coverage of these agreements and the extent to which they actually liberalize trade. This study focuses on major choices made in the negotiation of the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement and the ways in which these choices help or hinder the consolidation of economic regionalism. The results achieved in the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement are limited at best. The agreement does establish some new areas of cooperation among the signatories but fails to address important issues for regionalism such as labor mobility. It also makes limited progress in harmonizing and liberalizing rules of origin. The ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement applies product-specific rules to fewer categories of goods than most of Japan's bilateral agreements with ASEAN members but those rules in place are still very restrictive. Moreover, the parties to the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement have the option of applying the rules of their bilateral agreement if it provides more favorable treatment. Thus, there is no guarantee the more liberal terms of the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement will be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses major conceptual and empirical issues relevant to the exchange rate policies of East Asian ecnomies. Given the high degree of economic integration, intraregional exchange rate stability remains an important objective in East Asia. But the current uncoordinated practice of each economy managing exchange rates or maintainging a de facto dollar peg is not optimal for this purpose. The paper suggests that the region's governments take a coordinated action to shift the anchor of nominal exchange rate policy from the US dollar alone to a common basket of the US dollar, The Japanese yen, and the Euro, Which would be more reflective of the average structure of foreign trade and direct investment. At least initially, each economy is gree to choose its own formal exchange rate arrangement, be it a fixed exchange rate regime, a crawling peg or a managed float with wide margins, as long as it chooses the common basket as the reference. Such an arrangement is a pragmatic policy option for East Asia until greater political and institutional development create an environment condcive to a more robust framework of monetary and exchange rate policy coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continued integration of international economies is an unfolding process that has accelerated in recent years and that is believed to have the potential to impact on the structure of the spatial economy. The process is of interest from the viewpoint of the transport scholar, because a relevant question is whether, and if so to what extent, the economic changes implied by integration can be guided and influenced by transport infrastructure and services. A number of studies have been conducted, in particular in a European setting, that examine the potential links between accessibility and economic activity. The objective of this paper is to analyse the relationship between intermodal network accessibility and the spatial distribution of economic activities in an east Asian setting. To this end, a multivariate framework based on the use of spatial statistical models is proposed that furthers the methodological possibilities of accessibility analysis. The empirical findings suggest that, once contextual factors are considered, the influence of accessibility as an explanatory factor of the spatial distribution of economic activity in the region becomes very much diminished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent crises in East Asia and Latin America have raised questions about the conduct of macroeconomic policy in developing countries. But what is the scope for macroeconomic management in developing countries? Should international financial institutions that assist developing countries rely heavily on it? This paper investigates these issues. It concludes that, while the scope for tight macroeconomic control may be limited in some countries, appropriate structural reform could make the traditional macroeconomic policy tools more effective in the long run. This finding has important implications for reforming the International Monetary Fund. Although conducting macroeconomic policy is not a piece of cake, it should not prove to be an impossible mission if it is accompanied, or even preceded, by measures to strengthen the supply side. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effect of Confucianism, an influential cultural belief and ethical philosophy in East Asia, on business strategy. Employing a large-scale archival dataset of Chinese public firms covering 2007 to 2020, we provide evidence that Confucianism is positively associated with analytical-oriented strategies. Our empirical findings remain intact after accounting for alternative Confucianism measures, controlling formal institutions and religions, instrumental variable methods, and other approaches to addressing endogeneity and robustness issues. Cross-sectional analyses further reveal that the documented effect is more evident for non-state-owned firms, firms with executives lacking overseas experience, and those operating in higher economic policy uncertainty. Overall, our study sheds light on how traditional culture, an important dimension of informal institutions, shapes corporate strategic decisions in emerging markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most striking features of the economic development that has occurred in the East Asian region has been the influential role of the state in directing its course. Vietnam is also following this well-worn path of state-led developmentalism. The principal contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, we place the Vietnamese experience in comparative historical and conceptual perspective. It is suggested that the structure of the Vietnamese state itself and the distinctive nature of the policies it has undertaken are reflections of the country's traumatic recent history and the fact that its leadership is notionally “communist.” Our second contribution is to detail some of the more important aspects of this process. We provide two case studies which focus on the role of state-owned enterprises and decentralisation initiatives which demonstrate that, despite the frequently ad hoc and contingent nature of the developmental project and an absence of the sort of state capacity that distinguished the likes of Japan in its heyday, the Vietnamese government is overseeing economic development in creative and surprisingly effective ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reviews recent developments in regional financial and monetary cooperation in East Asia, and suggests some issues that could contribute to more constructive development in the future. The regional monetary and financial cooperation was originally motivated by the Asian financial crisis, but it has faced new challenges due to some recent events, such as the global financial crisis and global imbalances. We review recent developments of regional financial and monetary cooperation in East Asia, such as CMIM, ABMI and ABF, and regional surveillance mechanisms. We argue that there are several issues to be discussed in developing more effective regional financial and monetary cooperation: including developing CMIM to be effective in preventing future crisis, linking regional cooperation with global financial architecture properly, constructing effective surveillance mechanism, and strengthening regional policy dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Japanese foreign policy six decades after the end of World War II stands at a crossroads. The forces of globalization and the rise of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) seem to herald the end of the unipolar post-Cold War international system and the emergence of a new era defined by multi-polarity and multilateralism. Such global trends are manifest most clearly in Japan's own backyard, where phenomenal region-wide economic growth, a gradual redistribution of power (in particular the rise of China and India), and the increasingly important role of multilateral cooperation and regional institutions are dramatically transforming East Asia. This trend shows no signs of slowing down, much less reversing itself; nor would it be in Japan's interest to pursue any policy that seeks to do so. Nevertheless, the transformation itself remains almost on auto-pilot, lacking a clear long-term guiding vision. After presenting a brief overview of Japan's past policy toward the region, the goal of this paper will be to articulate such a vision through a series of policy proposals through which to ensure future peace, stability, and prosperity in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of FDI from the United States in the economic performance of East Asian NICs for 1966-2000. To this end, we draw our argument of the role of FDI from the modernization-dependency debate. Then, we test the economic effects of U.S. direct investment on economic growth in East Asian NICs using a neoclassical production function model that captures the economic impacts of both foreign and domestic investment on economic growth. Our empirical results show that U.S. direct investment has a positive and significant effect on economic growth in East Asian NICs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is increasingly apparent that the Asian economic crisis has also led to a serious ideological crisis in the West. Before the collapse there was broad agreement among Western orthodox economists that developing countries should pursue a set of economic policies, often referred to as the 'Washington consensus', which included financial sector liberalisation, privatisation of state-owned enterprises, fiscal discipline and trade, exchange rate and foreign investment deregulation. Since the collapse, however, this consensus has broken down. This paper examines the emergence of the new so-called post-Washington consensus, with its emphasis on governance and social capital. The lexicon of the new policy paradigm underlying this new consensus includes civil society, safety nets, and, especially, governance, to be added to the conventional Washington terminology of open markets, deregulation, liberalisation and structural adjustment. Our central thesis is that this new post-Washington consensus is an attempt to place more emphasis on the political and institutional foundations for programmes of structural reform. However, it is also a kind of politics of antipolitics that attempts to insulate economic institutions from the process of political bargaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a striking recent upsurge of oppositional political activity in East Asia, including labour and popular responses to the Asian economic crisis. This is mirrored in the policy recommendations and campaigns advanced by Asian and European NGOs that provide an alternative vision for sustainable economic and social development. The paper explores the significance of politics 'from below' for current efforts to institutionalize interregional cooperation through the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). It asks whether it is justifiable to identify this development as comprising emergent realities of 'regional civil society' and 'transnational democracy'. The first part outlines the theoretical debate between neoliberal, liberal-pluralist and critical-structural approaches to civil society's attempts to respond to processes of 'globalization'. The second part examines the role of both elite social movements and developmental NGOs as actors seeking to address the current ASEM agenda. It identifies key tensions in the responses of civil society actors: between elite inclusion, accommodation and outright opposition. This is followed, in the third part, by a critique of current NGO response to ASEM focusing on: (i) the practical dilemmas of their engagement with the emerging multilateralist agenda; (ii) the privileging of a liberal-pluralist conception of civil society that dominates NGOs' 'rethinking' of their strategic goals; and (iii) a misreading of the globalization discourse that serves to obscure the ways in which capitalism is actually being reconfigured in our era. The main conclusion is that movements of political opposition have acted to increase public participation in and criticism of interregional policy discussions. However, it argues that capitalist social relations remain a massive obstacle to the kinds of demands for social justice made by associations of civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to examine the unique industrial relations systems of East Asian developing countries with special reference to Korea. Following the presentation of a framework of analysis, there is an assessment of environmental conditions, the strategy of the main actors and the changes to them arising from the progress of industrialization. Trade union organizations and collective bargaining in Korea are then examined. This involves special reference to an account of major differences between the Korean system and that of Japan. Outcomes of industrial relations and their recent changes are next discussed. Finally, the analysis is concluded with a review of prospects for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand for safe assets has increased in recent years. However, the supply of safe assets has remained concentrated in a few Western developed countries, and it cannot meet the demand for safe assets in East Asia. For historical and cultural reasons, we believe that real estate serves as safe assets in East Asia. To verify this issue, this study employs two sets of data, which, respectively, include three East Asian countries and eight Western countries, from 1998 to 2019 to construct two panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) models that we use to determine the differences between the housing markets in East Asian and Western nations. The empirical results show that house prices in East Asia tend to increase with economic policy uncertainty (EPU), indicating that real estate is a good hedge against uncertainty. In Western countries, however, real estate does not hold its value well in times of uncertainty. Therefore, this study confirms that real estate is a safe asset in East Asia, but not in Western countries. To lower the excessive price of houses in East Asian countries, this study recommends increasing the supply of other safe assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for a pluralist, integrative, ‘post-Washington Consensus’ view of an East Asian financial architecture in the post-global crisis world. What are the key architectural problems and how might such problems be resolved? The article aims to address these general questions and to develop a policy-applicable theory about a post-crisis regional financial architecture by focusing on the case of East Asia. The generic problems identified in the study include sovereignty, power struggles, structural diversity, collective action problems and weak regional identity and norms. Herein, I present a conceptual model of logically possible solutions to such problems, which comprises principled minimalism and host regulation, decomposition and issue linkage, and informal intermediaries. The proposed solutions reflect and reinforce the normative fragmentation and decentralization of global financial governance in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines current debates over the future direction of the reform agenda in post-crisis East Asia and sets them in the broader context of the global debate on the role of ideas and ideology in shaping economic policy-making. It argues that the contest of ideas in economic policy-making can evolve independently of their intellectual merit and empirical credibility and political interests play an important role. In the case of post-crisis East Asia, re-igniting the 'economic miracle' of the pre-crisis era does not stem from a politically neutral, dispassionate and intellectually rigorous analysis of what went wrong in the recession-inducing 1997 financial crisis that engulfed the region. It represents an attempt to reinvent orthodoxy in the domain of economic ideas and ideology by the global policy community that is in turn influenced by US-centric institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking a historical and comparative view, we explore the long debated cause of the spectacular economic successes of East Asia using land reforms in China and Japan during the 1940-50s. Examining the approach to land reform embodied by technocrats such as Liu Shaoqi in China and Wada Hiroo in Japan in addition to the implementation mechanisms of the policies they adopted, we show that the land reforms developed characteristics of dynamic factor endowment according to the Engerman-Sokoloff hypothesis. Fairly equal land redistribution led to political power equality and improved agricultural productivity and income equality, which is conducive to long-term economic development and the prevention of the Kuznets effect ex ante. Nevertheless, factors such as initial exogenous shocks, insufficient scale of family farming, persistent government support and consequential interest groups obstruct sustainable development of the agricultural sector as well as the generalization of East Asian experiences. Equality or inequality is essentially a policy choice in addition to being a long-term ex post evaluation of the reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The special issue this article opens engages with an apparent conundrum that has often puzzled observers of East Asian politics—why, despite the region's considerable economic integration, multilateral economic governance institutions remain largely underdeveloped. The authors argue that this ‘regionalism problématique’ has led to the neglect of prior and more important questions pertaining to how patterns of economic governance, beyond the national scale, are emerging in East Asia and why. In this special issue, the contributors shift analytic focus onto social and political struggles over the scale and instruments of economic governance in East Asia. The contributions identify and explain the emergence of a wide variety of regional modes of economic governance often neglected by the scholarship or erroneously viewed as stepping stones towards ‘deeper’ multilateralism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article provides empirical evidence of the relationship between currency depreciation and stock market return using Korean and Japanese nonfinancial firms' data. Although the recent FX market circumstances have changed compared to Choi et al. (2010), we can still confirm the beggar-thy-neighbour using the extended sample period. Beggar country may change depending on the sample period, but Eichengreen and Sachs (1985) hypothesis can hold across the different macroeconomic circumstances. Currency depreciation is positively related to stock market return controlling for the firm-specific variables. The result shows that Japanese exporting firms would be advantageous due to the Japanese Yen (JPY) depreciation, and this situation is expected to continue under the Abenomics policy regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study applies nonlinear threshold unit-root test to assess the nonstationary properties of the Real Interest Rate Parity (RIRP) for 10 East Asian countries relative to China. We find that nonlinear threshold unit-root test has higher power than linear method suggested by Caner and Hansen (2001) if the true Data-Generating Process (DGP) of real interest rate convergence is in fact a stationary nonlinear process. We examine the validity of RIRP from the nonlinear point of view and provide robust evidence that clearly indicates that RIRP holds true for eight countries in this region. It implies that the choices and effectiveness of the monetary and fiscal policies in the East Asian economies will be highly influenced by external factors originating from China. Also, our findings point out their real interest rate convergence relative to China is mean reversion towards RIRP equilibrium values in a nonlinear way. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1997-98 East and Southeast Asia experienced a region-wide financial crisis that saw national currencies lose 75 per cent of their value and stock markets wiped out. The financial crisis became an antagonistic and racialised referendum on Asian values between certain Asian governments and their Western critics. What was the larger political significance of this focus on Asian values? Focusing on the Malaysian government's controversial decision to go against the international financial community by implementing capital controls during the crisis, I argue that the debate over Asian values can be understood as performances to challenge and psychologically defend the conventional hierarchy of international relations that followed its symbolic disruption through the economic success of the regional economies before the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Developmental State (DS) has been central to East Asia's rapid economic development over the last three decades. This analysis reviews the origins of the concept of the DS, the broader theoretical battles that provide the context in which the concept has been used, and the conditions that facilitated the emergence of the DS itself. The way in which the changing events in East Asia have influenced analyses of the DS will also be addressed with special attention paid to the onset of globalization, the end of the Cold War, and the impact of the Asian financial crisis. Finally, an assessment is undertaken of analyses of the DS that have appeared in the pages of The Pacific Review over the last twenty years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on developmental state concepts and its evolution into a working form. It states that developmental states were conceived as an interventionist state that achieved goals through tax credits and breaks, subsidies, export promotion, import controls and financial and credit policies. It presents a case study of the developmental state in Latin America, including the use of government intervention to build infrastructures such as railways and transport roads, promoting skilled labor immigration, and protecting export sectors. It comments on stages of development states in Latin America starting after Latin American nations gained their independence until the Great Depression and industrialization after the Great Depression until the 1960s.

Two decades ago the Vietnamese Communist Party embarked on a transformation from central planning towards a "socialist market economy under state guidance." It looked to East Asian development models, particularly the role of state enterprises (SEs), combined with the creation of a "civilised and equitable" society. The article argues that, in the case of SEs, the state's inability, especially under donor pressure, to provide crucial investment support to the SEs meant that foreign investors and the domestic non-state sector began to dominate the economic landscape. While state-led development remains feasible, it requires a clear and more authoritative industry policy; otherwise, the balance of interventionism could eventually tip towards cronyism. Further, the vagueness of the term "civilised and equitable" society leaves open both conformity with the post-Washington consensus and the possibility to achieve more aggressive redistributive measures, including redistribution of power. In practice, inclusion in and exclusion from successful public-private networks has been crucial for the capacity of individuals to participate in the rising prosperity of the market economy and has driven a process of rising regional inequality and the emergence of a new social class structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the "Asian Culture/Asian Success" hypothesis, the framework which the rapid economic growth of East Asia has frequently been explained. In doing so, it examines the basis for this thinking from various disciplinary perspectives and raises questions about the information requirement to test such a framework at the macro and micro levels. Results show that macro level inference is not conclusive in view of the many factors operating: some economic, some historic, and some cultural, and the inability to replicate the relevant experiences over time. Micro level tests are challenging but more promising.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the impact of exchange rate volatility on exports in four East Asian countries (Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand). Specifically, this article aims at determining whether the bilateral real exchange rate volatility between an East Asian country and its trading partner negatively affects the exports of the East Asian country. Considering the dominant roles of the USA and Japan as trading partners of those East Asian countries, this article focuses on the quarterly export volumes of East Asian countries to the US and Japan for the period from 1981 to 2004. Except for the case of Hong Kong's exports to Japan, cointegration tests and estimations of error correction models indicate exchange rate volatility has negative impacts on exports either in the short-run or in the long-run, or both. On the other hand, the real GDP of importing countries and depreciation of real bilateral exchange rates turn out, in general, to have positive effects. Of special interest is the finding that the impact of the exchange rate volatility does not show any stylized differences depending on whether the importing country is Japan or the USA, even though dollar invoicing dominates in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic globalisation is the defining characteristic of our age and a process which is transforming the parameters of the national state and global power relations. However, it is also a contradictory, uneven and unpredictable phenomenon. East Asia has been at the epicenter of globalisation for the past 30 years and will continue to be so with the rise of China’s economy. The region has been one of the main beneficiaries of the globalisation process, with exceptional geo-political advantages producing terms of engagement with the global economy not matched by other developing regions. However, its relations have also been paradoxical. At a time when globalisation theory predicted the demise of the national economy and the waning of national identity, East Asian growth was driven, above all, by the developmental state, with strong and interventionist Governments often successfully supporting ‘national’ neo-merchantilist economic policies and strong state identities. Some argue that the developmental state has now run its historical course, made redundant by its own success in the global market. This article examines the evidence for the changing nature of the state in the global economy and asks what are the likely future forms of the state in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article starts from Peter Gowan's notion of a Dollar-Wall Street Regime (DWSR) characterized by financial deregulation, the dollar as the world's currency, large international capital flows, and frequent financial crises. The author argues that the DWSR has relied on a special economic relationship between the United States and East Asia, characterized by large East Asian trade and current account surpluses with the United States and the investment of East Asian dollar holdings in U.S. capital markets. For some time both parties benefited from this relationship, but eventually it gave rise to financial crises in East Asia. Thus, Japan's financial crisis around 1990 and the 1997/98 East Asian financial crisis are both related to economic over-accumulation caused by the buildup of currency reserves through trade with the United States. Attempts at East Asian monetary integration since 1997 are viewed as a potential challenge to the DWSR. These attempts have however been blocked or rendered harmless by regional divisions as well as by U.S. resistance. While an East Asian political challenge to the DWSR is unlikely for the time being, the special U.S.-East Asian economic relationship may become substantially weakened by the growing problems of the U.S. economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article attempts to shed light on the appropriate interest rate policy in the process of economic development. To this end, we examine whether higher interest rates lead to higher investment (and growth) in four East Asian countries. We find that the investment rate went up with real interest rates up to 9 per cent in all four countries but started declining at still higher interest rates in two of the countries. Further, a banking crisis occurred in each of the three countries for which the real interest rates exceeded 9 per cent. This evidence rejects the 'neo-structuralist' argument. Nor does it support unbridled financial liberalisation. Yet, it provides only limited support to Stiglitz's case for 'mild financial repression (real interest rates near zero)' since reducing real interest rates from say, 6 to 3 or 0 per cent would have reduced investment. The optimum policy seems to be closest to McKinnon's 'restrained financial liberalisation' policy, that is, liberalisation with a moderate upper limit (about 6 or 7 per cent) on the real interest rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the influence of globalization on a state's trade policy and politics through the study of Japan-China trade friction over safeguards. Two hypotheses are presented: the state shows transformative capacity to formulate trade policy for maintaining overall interest of national industries in rapidly evolving international marketplaces, and division in trade policy preferences among societal actors due to globalized corporate activities has a critical influence on a state's trade policy. In the two case studies, the Japanese government showed different responses to demand for invoking safeguard measures. In the textile case, the government maintained a stance against the measures, stressing the need for structural reform. In the agricultural case, the government invoked emergency import curbs on farm products rather swiftly after an import surge became a serious problem. In addition to the different degree of support from political circles, policy preferences of government agencies concerned produced this difference. While the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) took into account the evolving influence of China on Japanese industries, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) handled the issue from a purely domestic standpoint. Division in policy preferences among societal actors also differed in the two cases. In the textile case, opposition from producers engaging in operations in China impeded a petition itself or helped to create public opinions against import restrictions. In the agricultural case, trading houses, main actors engaging in the development and imports of Chinese products, did not implement overt opposition activities because of their interests in desirable relations with the agricultural groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan stands accused of purveying a defective developmental state model of growth to the East Asian states which was responsible for the onset of the currency crises from 1997 onwards, and then of failing to provide the necessary leadership for the stabilization and recovery of the region. Japan’s position of economic dominance and its nascent political leadership role in East Asia are now seen to be under attack. However, this article argues that over the longer term Japan is continuing to exercise considerable covert economic and political leadership in the region. Examination of Japanese policy makers’ perceptions of the East Asian crisis reveals that they see the region as hit above all by currency crises which have transmuted into economic ones, but that the model of export and DFI-powered growth in the region is still fundamentally sound. Japanese policy makers contend that Japan is not responsible for the occurrence of the crises, nor are the USA- and IMF-prescribed solutions likely to hold the key to the restoration of growth in East Asia. Instead, they quietly lay the blame for the crises upon China for undercutting the competitiveness of East Asian exports and moving ahead of the ASEAN-4 in the regional production cycle. Hence, Japanese policy, as manifested in the New Miyazawa Initiative, has concentrated upon regearing existing developmental models, and has gradually begun to restore a measure of confidence in Japanese economic leadership and to set the agendas of both the USA and multilateral institutions towards the crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capitalist diversity is doomed in a global economy and the coming century will see ever more countries adapting their institutions to resemble more closely the Anglo-American model. Or so many believe. But to what extent have the ideological and institutional fundamentals of East Asian developmental states been eroded and in what measure is change being driven by an external-economic logic? Five propositions are developed in the light of the catch-up process, the sources and outcomes of financial liberalization, the Asian financial crisis, and Japan's bank crisis. The article concludes that the East Asian experience offers little comfort to those who expect that liberalization will lead to 'normalization'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that the East Asian economic crisis has thrown two versions of mainstream development theory into crisis because it threatens this shared vision. Neoliberalism responses to the crisis as championed by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United States government; Structural-institutionalist response to the crisis.

This article deals with the problems of Chile's transformation into an economic success within the political framework of limited democracy. Feline images are used to point to the similarities between Chile, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, or between the Latin American jaguar and the East Asian tigers. A comparison of some of the social and economic data of the felines shows some similarities and striking differences, and constitutes the first part of this work. Without entering into historical developmental comparisons, a rough description of the process through which Chile adopts the economic policies which make it comparable with the East Asian countries follows. A closer examination of the nature and main features of the Chilean jaguar constitutes the third section of the analysis. The last part of the article deals with the relationship between the economic feline features of Chile and its political character, or whether the authoritarian enclaves left behind by the military dictatorship should be dismantled, and their relation to the economic performance of the Jaguar. If dismantling is possible, Chile may in future become a democratic puma.

Examines debates about the industrialization of parts of East Asia in the context of the impasse in development theory. Failure of neo-classical theory, regulation theory and the theory of the new international division of labor to explain the rise of the newly-industrializing countries; Competitive disadvantages for late developers in the global political economy.