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Since 2017, India has introduced an increasing number of protectionist economic policies including higher tariffs, import duties and production subsidies while also rejecting and reviewing free trade agreements and imposing new regulations on foreign companies. This paper seeks to make sense of India's recent foreign economic policies and their potential impact on its relations with East Asia. It does so by analyzing the economic, political and geopolitical drivers of these policy changes and placing their emergence within a broader historical context. It is argued that India is entering a new period of "neo-mercantilist" economic nationalism that simultaneously seeks to protect and nurture industries while attracting foreign investment and integrating India into global value chains. This is the outcome of the consequences of "liberal" economic nationalist policies and a changing geopolitical environment — including a broader global impetus toward neo-mercantilist policies and conflict with China. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified this pre-existing turn toward neo-mercantilism. India's new economic nationalism has the potential to produce significant changes in India's relations with East Asia but also faces significant challenges in its implementation in the post-COVID era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article comments on the paper by H. Genberg on the exchange rate arrangements and financial integration in East Asia. He emphasizes the need of East Asian currencies to be stabilized against the intra-regional currencies. He stresses the condition for a monetary policy coordination approach to be taken in a form of a common inflation. He questions if there are any Association of Southeast Asian Nations currencies that serve as an anchor currency.

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]

Presents comment on an article regarding the role for regional cooperation among policymakers in building capacity and links between financial markets in East Asia. Participation of nonresident and institutional investors in domestic financial markets; Structural and performance problems in key East Asian financial markets; Institutional diversities, strengths and weaknesses of the local financial markets; Need for an integrated and robust regional financial market.

Two views dominate the academic discussion of the root cause of the Asian crisis: the ‘panic-illiquidity’ view and the ‘moral hazard-structural’ view. This paper traces the factors that contributed to the build-up of financial vulnerabilities across the affected economies and compares these two accounts of the crisis. The paper argues that the two views are complementary in that policy prescriptions derived from one that disregard the prescriptions from the other would be incomplete. It summarises the medium and long-term post-crisis policy directions at the national, regional and international levels. [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 examined the effect of the real exchange rate (RER) misalignment on total factor productivity (TFP) growth in East Asian countries. Alternative estimations of TFP and the RER misalignment are used to reduce the severity of measurement errors. The empirical results support a positive role of a depreciated RER in promoting TFP growth. The panel‐corrected standard error (PCSE) estimator indicates that three out of four RER misalignment indices have positive and significant relationships with TFP growth. This result is consistent among baseline regressions and regressions using additional covariates. The effect of the RER misalignment on TFP growth is sizable. Ten per cent depreciation in the RER causes the TFP growth rate to increase roughly 0.3 percentage points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the emergence and implementation of an international institution can only be fully understood if it is seen as part of a larger regime complex. It analyses the establishment of the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), a regional financial arrangement in East Asia, by focusing on its interplay with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It will be argued that four factors play a major role in the CMI'S interactions within the financial regime complex: the lack of a clean slate, forum shopping, legal inconsistencies and the politics of implementation. [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]

In this paper I discuss some of the most important lessons on exchange-rate policies in emerging markets during the last 35 years. The analysis is undertaken from the perspective of both the Latin American and East Asian nations. Some of the topics addressed include: the relationship between exchange-rate regimes and growth, the costs of currency crises, the merits of 'dollarization,' the relationship between exchange rates and macroeconomic stability, monetary independence under alternative exchange-rate arrangements, and the effects of the recent global 'currency wars' on exchange rates in commodity exporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a coherent framework to characterize the dynamics of economic development and institutional change in the East Asian Development Model. In the early stage of development, due to market incompleteness, a government with high autonomy and capacity can promote economic development through interlinked and relational arrangements (e.g., industrial policy). In later stages, market completion will usually unravel interlinked and relational contracts, and lead to a rule-based society. The paper shows that the appropriate role of government and institutions are functions of the stage of development. In particular, relation-based governance is suited to investment-led development, while rule-based governance is suited to innovation-led development. The paper ends up with some implications for China's development and institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that the path of economic development for would-be developers has changed fundamentally since the 1980s. Focusing on East Asia, and taking a broad perspective that spans the economic and social dimensions of development, we contend that the path charted by the 'late development' model has become all but impassible. The path is now better conceived as one of 'compressed development.' Key differences are 1) the extent and consequences of compression; 2) the primary mode of engagement with the world economy-via global value chains; and 3) the interaction of these. Compressed development forces states to address a number of simultaneous challenges, resulting in 'policy stretch.' We identify key features of an 'adaptive state' suited to navigating the path of compressed development. [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 surveys the literature on the links between education and economic growth in East Asia. It finds that education is important for economic growth but it is not a sufficient condition. The complementarity between education and other factors in enhancing productivity and efficiency is commonly seen as the driving force of economic growth. However, the empirical evidence is ambiguous due to econometric problems. Statistical analysis suggests that education and economic growth in East Asia have two-way causality. Nevertheless, valuing education has been a widely-accepted part of Asian values. As a result, education consistently presents as a significant income determinant and consequentially a growth factor, regardless of whether education can increase productivity. East Asian education systems are also formed and extended in close relation to the stages of their economic development: the higher the level of economic development, the greater the demand for better and higher education systems. [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]

Focuses on the role for regional cooperation among policymakers in building capacity and links between financial markets in East Asia as well as in encouraging stable speculation and the participation of nonresident and institutional investors in domestic financial markets. Overview of capital flows and cross-border banking including net repayment of loans; Recovery programs of the stock markets after the financial crises of late 1990s; Indicators of quality of financial infrastructure.

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]

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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]

Little is known about the impact of standards on the economic development of countries which are latecomers to industrial manufacturing and innovation. Standardization is regarded primarily as a technical issue, and hence receives only limited high-level policy support. However, technical standards contribute at least as much as patents to economic growth. As a key mechanism for the diffusion of technological knowledge and due to the dominant leadership by advanced countries in patenting, technical standards have emerged in latecomer countries as an alternative to patenting. However, latecomer countries and their firms have a set of capabilities and constraints that are fundamentally different from that of advanced countries and firms. This paper argues that latecomer countries should adopt assessment criteria that are more fitted with latecomer contexts which emphasize learning effects and building dynamic capabilities. The paper discusses current issues that are essential in understanding the rise of Asian countries in standardization. We also examine the critical role that patents play for standardization and argue that “strategic patenting” to generate rents from de facto industry standards can stifle latecomer economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what degree can the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the East Asian crisis be accounted for within a dynamic general equilibrium model? This paper investigates that question using a framework in which the crisis itself is modeled as an exogenous shock to the country risk premium. This exercise has empirical discipline because the scale of the shock can be measured by the movement in the reported risk premium. We calibrate a quantitative sticky-price dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy to match the features of three East Asian economies: Thailand, Korea, and Malaysia. We identify a shock to the country risk premium using published data from international bond markets, and identify shortrun monetary policy using observed domestic interest rates. We find that the modeled response to the observed increase in external interest rates substantially matches macroeconomic data on prices and quantities at the aggregate and sectoral level. However, the model has more difficulty explaining the large exchange rate devaluations that occurred in those economies. [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]

Deepening market-driven economic integration in East Asia makes intraregional exchange rate across the region increasingly desirable and necessary. The paper suggests that East Asia's emerging economies begin to choose a currency basket as a monetary policy anchor to enable all East Asian currencies to collectively appreciate vis-à-vis the US dollar, while maintaining intraregional rate stability, in the event of surges of capital inflows or a rapid unwinding of global payments imbalances. Following this initial step, East Asia may agree on more rigid intraregional exchange rate stabilization schemes through, for example, an Asian Snake or an Asian Exchange Rate Mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs a Markov-switching approach to model the dynamics of East Asian short rates. Regime changes are incorporated in standard unit root test to reveal periodic changes in the stationarity property of interest rates. There is evidence that three of the five short rates follow a random walk process in tranquil and low rates episodes but mean-revert in periods when rates are high and volatile. Singapore short rates are characterised by a random walk process, whereas the Philippines rates behave as a mean-reverting process in both regimes. Factors such as exchange rates, monetary policy and interest rate differentials vis-à-vis US interest rates influence the likelihood of short rates being in a volatile state. The regime switching dynamics of interest rates carry important implications for policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Trade policy in East Asia has switched from non-discriminatory unilateral liberalization, reinforced by General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) commitments, to discriminatory free trade agreements (FTA). The paper surveys the FTA activity of the major regional players: China, the ASEAN countries, Japan, and South Korea. It concludes that emerging FTAs are weak and partial. A hub-and-spoke pattern of dirty FTAs will not drive regional economic integration or further integration with the global economy. Rather, it could be a force of regional economic disintegration – especially if the multilateral trading system weakens further. At the same time, FTA activity is distracting attention from the WTO, and, more fundamentally, from unilateral liberalization and domestic structural reforms. Hence, East Asian trade policies need to be rebalanced, with better-quality FTAs and more focus on the WTO. However, more important than the WTO and FTAs is a fresh spurt of unilateral liberalization and structural reform outside trade negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than three years have passed since the inception of the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) in May 2000. Although much progress has been made, the present structure of the CMI is still incomplete. The purpose of this paper is to provide a view on the current process and future prospects for regional financial and monetary cooperation in East Asia. Looking forward, the most realistic scenario is that the countries participating in the CMI will muddle through, continuously discussing modalities of policy dialogue, the types of the surveillance system the CMI needs, and also augmentation of swap amounts without making any substantial progress. [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]

The article presents information about the book "Development Strategies in East Asia and Latin America." The book contains twelve papers, originally presented at an international conference at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, in November 1994, that provide a comparative analysis of the still unfolding development experiences of East Asia and Latin America. The papers discuss the roles of the state and market in the development process, with special reference to the "East Asian miracle"; economic growth and equity;structural adjustment in East Asia and Latin America; the Brazilian economic development experience; two decades of economic policy in Chile; future economic policy challenges in Chile; structural adjustment and economic growth in Mexico; economic reform and government-business relations in Korea.

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 article focuses on the East Asian economy. The vital question regarding the need for an economic reform, posed in the wake of the economic crisis of 1997, has divided both economists and policymakers. The case against major structural reform begins with the dramatic growth of these economies over the past twenty years. For example, Korea, the focus of this paper, has transformed itself into a major economic power, exporting cars and semiconductors to the world and quintupling its gross domestic product per capita between 1970 and 1995. East Asia's achievement is all the more remarkable given that most developing countries have achieved very little development and have fallen further behind the advanced economies. Indeed, East Asia has been used as an example to understand how other countries could achieve more rapid economic development and convergence. According to those who contend that major reform is unnecessary, the crisis of 1997 was the result of macroeconomic mismanagement and the effects of economic crises in Thailand that created a temporary liquidity shortage.

This article discusses the role of industrial policy in the economic growth of East Asia. All Asian nations, including Japan, have experienced some degree of official corruption, private collusion, artificial prices set either above or below market-clearing levels, and other distortions that ought to work against economic growth. But still, a number of East Asian economies have been quite successful at producing high economic growth and managing industrialization. The existence of industrial policy may have lowered the perception of risk, thereby raising expected rates of return on investment and yielding more rapid capital accumulation. By providing a generally favorable environment for business governments have encouraged banks to lend and firms to add capacity.

The 1990s witnessed that East Asia has become a strong hub in global production networks of many information and communication technology (ICT) industries, and a considerable body of research attempts to explain the remarkable development and cluster of firms in the global production networks (GPN). It controversially concludes that the state, or varieties of nationalism such as techno-nationalism and mercantilism, only plays a contextual, rather than a constituent, role of the GPN, and could be taken as part of extra-firm bargaining problems in the GPN2.0 framework. Thanks to a $4.95 million university-level research grant, a GPN center set up at the National University of Singapore spent a substantial amount of money to purchase the customized databases from the leading global market information providers and rendered the empirical data analysis of firm transactions possible. [Extracted from the article]

This article tackles two "how" questions of mission-oriented innovation policies in East Asia: How do these economies legitimize their mission-oriented innovation policies in the public discourse? and How do they create dynamic capabilities for implementing these policies? The article shows that although on the level of policy choices and design, the global–Western discourse has also entered the East Asian mission-oriented innovation policy rhetoric, this has not stopped the policymakers in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan from relying on old "developmentalist" logics for legitimizing these policies. This also influences actual policy implementation styles: as opposed to Western models of peripheral Schumpeterian agencies offering dynamic capabilities, the East Asian innovation bureaucracies seem to rely on more visible and "politicized" organizations for such capabilities. We also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments of the paper written by Charles Wyplosz titled "Deep Economic Integration: Is Europe a Blueprint?" It points out the implication of political vision and economic defensive motivations of integration, the importance and effectiveness of economic surveillance and the possible effect of the recent developments in the framework of Association of South-East Asian Nations on East-Asia's integration opportunity.

The article comments on the paper written by Razeen Sally titled "Free Trade Agreements and the Prospects for Regional Integration in East Asia." It states that the numerous FTA's in East Asia tends to be confusing and might not lead to efficient integration of the region as a whole. It agrees that the slow progress of global trade negotiations contributes to the proliferation of FTAs.

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]

The author comments on the article "Connectivity in East Asia," by D. H. Brooks in the same issue. He claims Brooks is confident on the benefits of connectivity after the global financial crisis showed the disadvantage of export reliance on the Chinese economy. He suggests that Asian economies implement policies that would help boost the productivity and balance its growth sources. He also advises conducting accurate assessments of the costs and benefits of intra-regional integration.