Asia-Pacific economic development is at a decisive point. The particular system of open trading is breaking down, and no longer has clearcut American support. East Asia can now provide a majority of the market's growth required for its own export expansion, but cannot carry the whole load alone....

In this paper, we investigate the degree of real economic interdependence between emerging Asia and major industrial countries to shed light on the heated debate over the "decoupling" of emerging Asia. We first document the evolution of macroeconomic interdependence for emerging Asian economies...