Fostering Monetary Financial Cooperation In East Asia

Since the Asian financial crisis of 1997OCo1998, there has been a deep and abiding desire on the part of Asian policy makers and opinion makers to enhance the region''s economic, monetary and financial self-sufficiency OCo or at least to ring-fence the region against financial instability and give it a louder voice in global financial affairs. There has been progress in these directions, notably in the form of the Chiang Mai Initiative of financial supports and the Asian Bond Market Initiative to build a single Asian financial market. But progress is hindered by disagreements among the principal national governments OCo Japan, China and South Korea OCo and resistance to the development of an Asian bloc from both Europe and the United States. This volume considers these issues from a number of different national and analytical perspectives. Scholars from all the relevant regions and countries are represented: Japan, China, Korea, Europe and the United States. While there have been a few previous books and articles concerned with the issue of Asian integration, this is one of the first volumes to successfully draw together top contributors from these different countries and regions to address the issues in a rigorous but relatively accessible way.

The global financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis have led to a profound rethink in East Asia about the international monetary system and regional monetary and financial integration. After the East Asian crisis of 1997, deeper regional cooperation was seen as the way to avoid reliance on the IMF and the rest of the world. Steps were taken, but they were limited because of disagreements reflecting regional rivalries. Still, integration into the global financial system and Europe's regional process were seen as objectives to be adapted to East Asia, as detailed in an overview chapter. The crises have shaken this strategy but also revealed the pre-existing deep disagreements. This book presents contributions by scholars from different countries. Each one was invited to describe the vision of their policymakers. The traidtional rivalry between China and Japan, the region's largest economies, reveals Chinese confidence into its rising power and Japanese growing doubts about its ability to weigh on the debate. For opposite reasons, both display a declining interest into regional cooperation. Korea and the ASEAN countries do not wish to choose between the regional powers but remain attached to regional cooperation and integration. They look for pragmatic solutions that recognize the value-chain characteristic of trade. Additional contributions by US and European scholars provide evaluations of the global and Eurozone crises and of their relevance for East Asian integration.

Three reports together: (1) Monetary & Financial Cooperation in East Asia: The Case for & Against Monetary & Financial Cooperation; Evolving Regional Financial Architecture in East Asia; Beyond the Chiang Mai Initiative: Coordination of Macroeconomic & Exchange Rate Policies. (2) Costs & Benefits of a Common Currency for ASEAN; Perspectives on Optimum Currency Area; The Suitability of ASEAN for a Common Currency; Constraints on the Adoption of a Common Currency. (3) New Economy & the Effects of Industrial Structures on International Equity Market Correlation, by Cyn-Young Park & Jaejoon Woo; Data Description & Correlation Analyses; Econometric Methods & Empirical Results.

This book looks at East Asia's monetary and financial integration from both Asian and European perspectives. It analyses the Euro area's framework for monetary policy implementation, introduced in 1999. It reviews the efforts to foster regional monetary and financial integration and relates them to Europe's own evolution. It highlights successes and failures in both cases and offers a careful assessment of the state of play. A central theme of the volume is that the East Asian reliance on markets is not enough to promote the kind of deep integration that Europe has achieved and that provides protection against exchange rate turbulence. The implications of the recent global crisis are also examined. Written by two of the foremost monetary experts on Asia and Europe, this book will be an invaluable aid to students and academics interested in the relevance of the European experience to the debates about monetary integration in East Asia.

"This paper argues that a regional financial architecture needs to be firmly established in East Asia, outlines recent developments in financial cooperation in the region, and provides possible directions for the future". -- p. 1.

East Asian countries were notably uninterested in regional monetary integration until the late 1990's, when the Asian financial crisis revealed the fragility of the region's exchange rate arrangements and highlighted the need for a stronger regional financial architecture. Since then, the countries of East Asia have begun taking steps to explore monetary and financial cooperation, establishing such initiatives as regular consultations among finance ministers and central bank governors and the pooling of foreign exchange reserves. In this book Ulrich Volz investigates the prospects for monetary cooperation and integration in East Asia, using state-of-the-art theoretical and empirical tools to analyze the most promising policy options. --