Postcrisis policy responses tilted in favor of strengthening the global regulatory system and financial stability have limited the attention paid to the role of finance in supporting sustained economic growth and development. This has special implications for Asia which, despite being the new...

Financial integration is a multidimensional process through which allocation of financial assets becomes increasingly borderless. This paper assesses the progress achieved thus far in capital market integration in Asia, and compares regional capital market integration with global financial...

Local currency bond markets in emerging Asian economies have expanded dramatically since governments took steps to end the currency and maturity mismatches that savaged borrowers in the region's financial crisis nearly 20 years ago. Encouraged in part by regional cooperation programs such as the...

The issue of decoupling is controversial. On the back of Asia's sustained high growth, the hypothesis that the region's business cycles would become increasingly independent of the global trend gained considerable attention. Asia was nonetheless hit hard by the global financial crisis and...

We investigate changes in Asia's regional and global trade linkages and their influence on macroeconomic relationships among Asia, Europe, and United States (US). We first document changes in trade patterns of East Asia, Europe, and US and discuss stylized facts about East Asia's trade...

This paper examines the impact of foreign participation in Korean Treasury Bond (KTB) futures and its role in price discovery for KTBs, using daily transactions data from the over-the-counter market for KTBs and from the Korea Exchange for the futures. Our analysis suggests that foreign trading...

"Poverty and income inequality remain a stubborn challenge in Asia and the Pacific despite the region’s rapid economic expansion in previous decades, which lifted millions out of poverty. Financial inclusion is often considered as a critical element that makes growth inclusive as access to...

We use a dynamic forecasting model to evaluate a wide array of opportunities for sustained economic growth in Myanmar. Our simulation results suggest that the government of Myanmar can advance potential growth drivers, by maintaining a stable macroeconomic environment that is conducive to...

Recognizing the need to formulate policy strategies for the changes it faces, Myanmar started a multifaceted reform process in 2011. But speeding up development requires a multipronged but more coherent strategy targeted at strong and resilient growth, employment generation and, ultimately,...

A host of external (global and regional) and internal (country-specific) factors affect Multinational Enterprises' Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) decisions. Differentiating the two entry modes of FDI (mergers and acquisitions [M&A] and Greenfield investment), this paper aims to empirically...