In determining the maturity structure of bank loans in the presence of pre-determined short-term international liabilities, we show that maturity mismatches in banks’ balance sheets are fully consistent with the assumption of banks acting as self-interested, optimising agents. Although often...

The East Asian financial crisis has raised a series of important issues. Amongst them is the question of the role of the banking sector and financial liberalisation in contributing to financial crises. How do weaknesses in the domestic banking sector, when combined with both domestic and...

Most analyses of the East Asian financial crisis have focused on its causes and the links between currency and banking crises. However a related question is what happens in the aftermath of a crisis? What factors determine the path of an economy in the post-devaluation phase? Does it swiftly...

Two features of East Asia’s recovery from the financial turmoil of 1997- 98 appear to be rather paradoxical. First, the regional economies (except Hong Kong, China and Malaysia) have allowed a relatively greater albeit modest degree of variability of their currencies according to market...

The dilemma facing policymakers is how to combine the instruments they have available in the form of fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policy to achieve the targets of internal and external balance. Shortly before the global economic and financial crisis in 2008 most economies appeared to be...

Global macroeconomic imbalances are among the key issues facing policymakers, especially in the US and China which are the two major affected / contributing parties. While there has been a great deal of discussion and disagreement on this important issue, what all sides have in common is the...

Asia was faced with a sudden and sharp crisis in 2008-2009, the proximate cause of which was reversals in foreign capital flows, not unlike the regional crisis a decade ago. How different has this boom and bust cycle of international capital flows been from the previous one? The paper examines...

This paper assesses selected fiscal and competitiveness issues in the newly industrialised economies (NIEs) of Hong Kong, Singapore, (South) Korea and Taiwan since the Asian financial crisis. The NIEs have been globally competitive and successful in maintaining a high degree of fiscal discipline...

This paper presents an empirical investigation on an important policy issue, namely, whether there is any evidence supporting monetary integration between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong. We follow two lines of inquiry. First, we present a series of simple tests to find the extent to which...