This paper analyses the extent to which ASEAN may be suitable for a regional monetary arrangement. On the economic front, we review evidence on patterns of trade, economic shocks, the extent of factor mobility, and the monetary transmission mechanism. We find that ASEAN today is less suitable...

Recent years have seen a wave of empirical studies attempting to give empirical content to the theory of optimum currency areas as a way of marshalling evidence on the costs and benefits of EMU. This paper reviews this empirical literature, as a way of examining the success with which theory has...

This paper argues that the U.S. financial crisis is a new type of crisis: a "financial black hole." Financial black holes are characterized by the breaking-up of credit market discipline and the large-scale financing of negative NPV projects. In a theoretical model, we explain how the...