The information and communication technology (ICT) revolution of the past 3 decades has transformed the world into an integrated marketplace. Today, producers and consumers alike are able to compare the prices of local businesses and worldwide sellers. For an increasing number of tradable goods,...

The information and communication technology (ICT) revolution of the past 3 decades has transformed the world into an integrated marketplace. Today, producers and consumers alike are able to compare the prices of local businesses and worldwide sellers. For an increasing number of tradable goods,...

We present a theoretical framework for policy making based on the “impossible trinity†or the “trilemma†hypothesis. A simple optimization model shows that placing more weight in terms of preference for each of the three open macroeconomic policies—exchange rate...

This paper discusses Japan’s strategy for Asian monetary integration. It argues that Japan faces three major policy challenges when promoting intraregional exchange rate stability. First, there must be some convergence of exchange rate regimes in East Asia, and the most realistic option is for...

A key lesson of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis (GFC) was the importance of containing systemic financial risk and the need for a “macroprudential†approach to surveillance and regulation that can identify system-wide risks and take appropriate actions to maintain...

Since the 1980s, emerging countries have been urged to welcome foreign capital inflows. The result has often been a pattern of surges, where excessive inflows were followed by damaging “sudden stops†and reversals. This was dramatically evident in the Asian crisis of...

As the world’s second largest economy, largest trading nation, and the largest foreign holder of United States (US) government bonds, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) needs a currency with international status that can match its economic status in the global economy....

An Asian Currency Unit (ACU) index is constructed using an alternative procedure which minimizes a basket or portfolio of assets expressed in terms of national currencies. Using this estimated ACU index and an ACU Deviation Indicator, the main finding of this study based on the current...

Pegging in a coordinated way to a regional basket currency is considered by many as optimal for east-Asian countries. By contrast, according to existing empirical studies, these countries have most often relied on noncooperative United States dollar or G3 pegs. We show for the first time...

We develop a new set of indexes of exchange rate stability, monetary policy independence, and financial market openness as the metrics for the trilemma hypothesis. In our exploration, we take a different and more nuanced approach than the previous indexes developed by Aizenman, Chinn, and Ito...