Because the European Central Bank's current goal is to achieve stable prices, some EU countries have adopted direct inflation control as a target of financial policy. Several other countries, however, have adopted other targets, such as money supply targeting, exchange rate targeting, and other...

This paper estimates the effect that the APEC 'currency union', loosely defined, has on trade and, via trade, on output per capita. A gravity model is used to measure the impact of exchange-rate variability on trade flows within APEC. The gain in trade flows from eliminating nominal...

Since the 1980s, many regional agreements have appeared to facilitate trade and spur economic growth. This paper examines whether or not the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis for regional agreements has been satisfied. This study employs a nonlinear unit root test for real exchange rates...

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) was established in 1989. APEC member countries are remarkably different from each other in many respects. The traditional optimum currency area (OCA) theory may not be suitable for application to APEC. This paper stresses business cycles and trade...

This article examines the suitability of the currency union in the Central Franc Zone (CFA) relative to business cycles and trade. Optimum currency area (OCA) criteria have been employed to determine the suitability of currency integration. This paper also develops a procedure for application of...

This article examines whether international trade openness is related with inflation or not in Asian countries. The relationship in the world has been discussed including economic growth for a long time from both theoretical and empirical ones, however, there has not been any consensus about...

The European Monetary System experienced pressure on exchange rates, which led toa devaluation or a subsequent widening of bands of EMS currencies. In this paper the source(s) of pressure on the exchange rate are identified. Currency crises were caused by fundamentals in 1992; however, they were...

This article focuses on the empirical relationship between the United States’ and Japan’s yield spread of interest rates and economic growth in Japan. The yield spread is defined in this article as the difference between the Japanese government bond yield minus the US government bond yield....

Corporate governance in Japan is now undergoing dramatic changes. A set of global standards for corporate governance has been advocated. For example, OECD complied guidelines on corporate governance in 1998 and 1999. Corporate governance measures are increasingly being paid attention to, and not...

Large accumulations of foreign reserves have been ongoing recently in Asian countries. Policymakers seem to have decided to increase high levels of foreign reserves for self-insurance or precautionary purposes against exchange rate movements. Other countries have accumulated foreign reserves to...