At an analytical level, economists have often categorised the international dimensions of environmental problems and policies as being national (or competitiveness), psychological (as opposed to physical) and transboundary (global) in nature. Focusing on transboundary pollution problems, the...

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...

This paper examines Thailand's pre-crisis exchange rate policy, focusing on the degree of the country's real exchange rate misalignment pre-crisis and its consequent effects on Thailand's trade balance with its two large trading partners, the US and Japan, in the 1980s and 1990s. Defining...

Much of the recent literature on the East Asian crisis of 1997-98 has focused on the sudden capital reversals and the accompanying regional bust. An oft ignored fact is that the bust was preceded by a prolonged boom period. This boom was fuelled primarily by large-scale capital inflows...

It is by now common knowledge that there can be a significant divergence in the de facto versus de jure exchange rate regimes operated by economies. Although much of the recent published literature in Asia has focused on the crisis-hit economies, Korea and Thailand in particular, scant attention...

This paper develops a simple model to examine the reasons behind the capital inflow surges into selected Asian economies in the 1990s prior to the financial crisis of 1997-98. The analytical model shows that persistent uncovered interest differentials and consequent capital inflows may be a...