There are two striking conventional wisdoms about the status of regional trading blocs in East Asia. The first is that the only formal regional arrangement in the area, ASEAN, does not in fact function as an economic bloc. Trade among the members is thought to be very low. The second is that...

New regional initiatives abound, both outside Asia and within. Free Trade Areas in the West - notably NAFTA, its possible enlargement into an FTA of the Americas, and the European Union - have implications for Asia. Asian manufacturers will experience trade diversion, especially in textiles and...

According to classical Ricardian trade theory, overall productivity differences between countries are manifested as differences in real labor incomes (absolute advantage), while the sectoral pattern of productivity differences determines trade patterns (comparative advantage). This paper...

A dynamic latent factor model of stock market returns is estimated using simulation-based techniques. Stock market volatility is decomposed into common and idiosyncratic components, and volatility decompositions are compared between stable and turmoil periods to test for possible shift-contagion...

This paper assesses the relationship between money and credit and episodes of sharp depreciation in East Asia by (i) examining growth rates of money and credit variables around depreciation episodes; (ii) estimating the impact of money and credit variables on the probability of a share...

This paper offers a game-theoretic interpretation of the recent currency crisis in Asia. Specifically, we argue that the 'price wars during booms' logic of Rotemberg and Saloner (1986) can be used to explain the nearly simultaneous devaluation of several Asian currencies during the summer of...