Monetary and Financial Cooperation in Asia : Emerging Trends and Prospects

Ever since the currency crisis of 1997-98 there has been a great deal of interest in enhancing regional economic cooperation in Asia. It is important to keep in mind that economic regionalism is multidimensional nature. The focus of this paper is on policy initiatives underway in Asia to enhance monetary and financial regionalism and the analytical bases for these initiatives, rather than on examining the de facto level of financial and monetary links that already exists (which may or may not have been facilitated via regional policy mechanisms). There are many gradations of monetary and financial regional cooperation, ranging from the weak form involving regional policy dialogue and surveillance, on the one hand, to exchange rate and monetary coordination, on the other. To maintain focus, this paper concentrates more narrowly on medium forms of monetary and financial regionalism, broadly defined as the development of regional liquidity arrangements and regional financial markets.