This paper examines the inflation experience of seven small economies in East Asia: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. It documents common elements in the inflation processes across countries that are not only due to the reaction of the countries to the...

This paper uses a semi-structural vector autoregression approach to estimate the relative importance of domestic and foreign shocks as sources of macroeconomic fluctuations in Hong Kong since the adoption of the currency board. We find that external factors are clearly dominant in the medium to...

This paper revisits the question whether economies in Asia are likely to be good candidates for pursuing similar exchange rate policies and ultimately joining together in a monetary union. A number of authors have investigated this question before typically using some variant of the methodology...

Interest in currency internationalisation among policy makers as well as the general public has intensified in recent years. One reason is a view that the global impact of the recent financial crisis has been intensified because of the dominant role of the US dollar in the international...

A central aspect of the recent debate on global imbalances and the US current account deficit is the role of the exchange rate peg being followed by China and other Asian economies. While one view has stressed the need for Asian currency appreciation, another focuses on the importance of fiscal...

Inflation in a country with a currency board is usually believed to be highly dependent on external factors. Important questions for understanding the dynamics of inflation are (i) how best to measure these factors and (ii) how to model the transmission mechanism. This paper brings evidence to...

While the relationship between volatility and risk is central to much of the financial literature it has not been incorporated systematically into assessment of sovereign debt sustainability. This paper attempts to fill this gap by studying how the probability distribution of sovereign debt to...

This paper argues that the success of inflation targeting is principally the result of having a clear unambiguous goal, price stability, for monetary policy that is determined not only by the central bank but by the political authorities more generally. With such a goal in place, and with...

Financial integration in East Asia is actively being pursued and will in due course lead to substantial mobility of capital between economies in the region. Plans for monetary cooperation as a prelude to monetary integration and ultimately monetary unification are also proposed. These plans...

This paper discusses issues related to the sequencing of the reforms that are necessary to transform the economies in Eastern Europe into market economies. It is first argued that the transition path of these economies will be smoother and less costly if a clear statement of the ultimate goals...