Asian States Asian Bankers

Financial markets are given to instability, but some financial systems are more crisis-prone than others. Natasha Hamilton-Hart's historically grounded investigation of central banks, governments, and private bankers in Southeast Asia helps explain why. Focusing on Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, she shows how the long-term development and internal attributes of central banks and state financial institutions shape their interactions with private bankers and influence their ability to manage the financial sector.The politics of finance in Southeast Asia is understudied, Hamilton-Hart contends, and central banks themselves virtually ignored. Yet central banks play a pivotal role in determining a country's vulnerability to regional and global financial pressures such as the currency and financial crises of the late 1990s. Southeast Asian central bankers were major players in the events surrounding these upheavals. Countries in the region experienced the economic chaos in different ways, however, as the central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore drew upon different institutional capacities and legacies. Asian States, Asian Bankers brings new case material to the field of political economics and delineates the operation of central banks and their roles in the monetary and financial policies of three Southeast Asian states. In addition, Hamilton-Hart's work bridges two areas that have often been studied apart from each other: the national-level politics of financial management and the transnational orientation of many bankers in Southeast Asia.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore, Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research, University of Chicago Booth Business School, and National University of Singapore Business School have organised the Asian Monetary Policy Forum (AMPF) annually since 2014. The Forum brings together eminent academics, policymakers and private sector economists to deliberate pressing monetary policy issues particularly relevant for Asian countries.This volume collects the inaugural speech and commissioned papers from the past Forums from 2014 to 2020. The chapters cover a range of topics that have assumed importance in the global monetary and financial system over the past twenty years. These include the efficacy of traditional monetary policy frameworks amid synchronised global financial flows, the challenges presented by the US dollar dominance, and the optimality of central banks' use of a broader set of policy instruments within an integrated policy framework. Policymakers, practitioners, students and academicians will be able to draw from this volume useful insights to understand these complex policy challenges.

This book is a history of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a multilateral development bank established 50 years ago to serve Asia and the Pacific. Focusing on the region's economic development, the evolution of the international development agenda, and the story of ADB itself, this book raises several key questions: What are the outstanding features of regional development to which ADB had to respond? How has the bank grown and evolved in changing circumstances? How did ADB's successive leaders promote reforms while preserving continuity with the efforts of their predecessors? ADB has played an important role in the transformation of Asia and the Pacific over the past 50 years. As ADB continues to evolve and adapt to the region's changing development landscape, the experiences highlighted in this book can provide valuable insight on how best to serve Asia and the Pacific in the future.

This study of Asia's financial crisis of 1997/98, its sources and history, suggests solutions for the rehabilitation of the financial systems for those countries in distress.

The strength of this book is that it summarises a vast amount of the modern literature in monetary economics. . . the book provides detailed and clear descriptions of monetary models. . . This comprehensive volume is a useful compendium of the monetary economics literature of the second half of the 20th century, which has to a certain extent been over taken by events. Paul Wachtel, Asian-Pacific Economic Literature This well-researched and finely crafted book is a valuable addition to the literature on monetary policy in developing countries. It explains the concepts and tools of monetary policy in a simple manner and discusses how monetary policy works in developing Asia in a historical context within the framework of an outward-oriented development strategy. I am not aware of any other book that covers the organisational and institutional aspects of major central banks in developing Asia. Prema-chandra Athukorala, Australian National University This book elaborates the key concepts, principles and models of inflation and monetary policy and explains how they remain relevant and useful to the design and conduct of monetary policy in developing Asia. In this rapidly growing region, price stability remains important and therefore monetary policy has gained increasing importance. Even while emphasising the importance of the classical approach, the book discusses alternative frameworks and points out areas where a consensus is emerging. The review of the literature is extensive and careful. Along with developing this theme, the book reviews the structure and governance of most central banks in the Asia-Pacific and discusses how they conduct monetary policy to achieve price stability under different monetary policy frameworks. The book fills a gap in the central banking and monetary policy literature and has no close competitors. It should be useful to both students and policymakers in developing Asia. Salim Rashid, University of Illinois, US The 1997 East Asia crisis exposed many economic policy weaknesses in the Asia-Pacific region. In his latest book, Dr Hossain provides students with a refreshing up-to-date reference text on the concepts and principles of money, banking and finance in developing countries which differ in many ways to monetary institutions and practices in developed countries, which conventional monetary textbooks focus on. I thoroughly recommend it. A.P. Thirlwall, University of Kent, UK This timely book reviews the modern literature on inflation and monetary policy, and highlights contemporary issues in the design and conduct of monetary policy for price stability in developing Asia. Akhand Akhtar Hossain surveys the evolution of central banking and provides an introduction to the structure, function and governance of central banks in selected countries in the Asia-Pacific. The author also examines the major theories, models and approaches to inflation and monetary policy, and evaluates monetary policy regimes in selected countries in the Asia-Pacific in a historical context. This eloquent and comprehensible book will prove to be invaluable to undergraduate students on monetary theory and policy as well as banking and financial courses. Researchers exploring monetary policy concepts, principles and case studies will warmly welcome this book, as will policy-makers who have an interest in macroeconomics, monetary and financial policies.

The traditional walls between banking, insurance and securities markets are breaking down as a result of deregulation and liberalization of financial services. The cross-buying of financial services has become a global trend as a part of the convergence of financial services. This trend has recently commenced in East Asian countries, such as Taiwan and Korea, where the tremendous growth of these activities has been noticed. The book explores what the determinants of this growth in East Asia, particularly in Korea and Taiwan are, and how these determinants influence differently to the customers of these two countries when compared with the studies conducted on other countries (e.g. Europe and North America). The book opens the view on the subject of customers’ behavioral intentions of cross-buying banking services in East Asian countries, especially from a cross-cultural perspective and empirically tested findings help marketing personnel in financial institutions, marketing practitioners’ in banks and researchers of financial services and marketing, understanding on East Asia such as Taiwan and Korea, where the tremendous growth of these activities has been noticed in recent years.

This book investigates the impact of both real and financial integration to growth and to welfare, and to enquire whether increases in either or both forms build the linkage between the real and financial economy. It contributes to the following two areas: (1) Research of economic developments in East Asia, the most dynamic and populous region in the world, in itself is important for researchers, policy makers, journalists, business people and others. East Asia’s economic developments influence peoples’ lives not only in East Asia but also in other parts of the world. (2) Many aspects of East Asian experiences in economic development are unique, making research of East Asia attractive and important to discern mechanisms of economic development. The first part of this study begins with chapters that address the measurement of regional integration compared with the engagement with the global economy and how this influences the aggregate behavior of the economies. The second part turns to consideration of the financial sector and the efficiency and performance of banking in the region. This allows a discussion whether, in the current crisis, the banking sector was an important channel of financial shock into real behavior. The third part turns to the corporate sector. Using data on firms, type of finance used by firms, its impact on their performance, and ownership structure influence over the productivity growth are discussed. Based on the findings, the book presents several policy recommendation and future research agenda for further economic integration in East Asia.