East Asia S Financial Systems

Financial systems in the East Asian region are commanding worldwide attention. Japan's financial sector, with an ailing banking system in the aftermath of a bubble economy, is undergoing a "Big Bang" deregulation, liberalization, and securitization. At the same time, the rehabilitation of Southeast Asian and Korean economies in the wake of the Asian financial crisis awaits restoration of their banking sectors. The region's bank-dominated and development finance-oriented financial systems are coming into friction with global capital markets that lack adequate architecture. In this volume, researchers from ten East Asian think- tanks analyse the financial systems in their respective economies. They survey the financial sector deregulation and liberalization that took place in the midst of economic booms and they evaluate the role of the financial systems in the region's current economic misfortunes. Together, the pieces in this volume lay the groundwork for understanding how financial systems in East Asia have evolved as the economies have grown more complex and capital markets have globalized, and how these systems must adapt to move beyond today's crisis to serve the region's economies in the future.

This collection discusses the role of financial institutions and markets in East Asian and Japan, corporate governance and new technology and how to redesign the East Asian and Japanese financial systems.

The study of financial frameworks focuses on corporate finance and analyzes the relationship between financing patterns and the level of development of securities markets and financial liberalization in the region.

This study analyzes the key issues and constraints -- in terms of efficiency, access and safety and soundness -- faced by East Asian countries in developing their financial markets which are at different stages of development, drawing on global experience. The study takes stock of the initiatives being undertaken at the regional level to foster greater financial integration as a means of deepening and diversifying financial markets, and on the policy issues that need to be addressed at the domestic level to deepen and diversify financial markets and to actually benefit from the actions that are being taken at the regional level.

Since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, East Asia has implemented a number of initiatives designed to strengthen monetary and financial cooperation, bolstering the region's resilience to economic and financial vulnerabilities. One such initiative is the ASEAN+3 Information Exchange and Policy Dialogue, which includes development of early warning systems (EWS) for financial crises. This book examines efforts to develop EWS models. Specifically, the book analyzes the current understanding of the causes of currency and banking crises, describes recent progress in developing and applying EWS models for currency and banking crises, reviews methodolgical issues, assesses the predictive power of EWS models and also highlights areas where further research is required to make these models more effective tools for policy analysis. The case studies apply both parametric and nonparametric approaches to EWS modleing using data from six East Asian countries.

IFC Technical Paper No. 3. Inflation plagues many of the developing countries in which the International Finance Corporation (IFC) operates. To date, however, little is known about the impact of inflation on the financial statements of firms in developing countries. The authors of this study have developed a simple algorithm, based on the method of inflation accounting used in Brazil, and have applied it to the accounts of listed companies in Turkey for the period 1982-90. The paper documents an inflation-induced bias in financial statements and introduces a methodology for adjusting corporate financial statements for inflation effects.

The increased mobility and volume of international capital flows is a striking trend in international finance. While countries worldwide have engaged in financial deregulation, nowhere is this pattern more pronounced than in East Asia, where it has affected in unanticipated ways the behavior of exchange rates, interest rates, and capital flows. In these thirteen essays, American and Asian scholars analyze the effects of financial deregulation and integration on East Asian markets. Topics covered include the roles of the United States and Japan in trading with Asian countries, macroeconomic policy implications of export-led growth in Korea and Taiwan, the effects of foreign direct investment in China, and the impact of financial liberalization in Japan, Korea, and Singapore. Demonstrating the complexity of financial deregulation and the challenges it poses for policy makers, this volume provides an excellent picture of the overall status of East Asian financial markets for scholars in international finance and Asian economic development.