This publication examines the impact of digitalization on the financial stability of the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the People’s Republic of China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea (ASEAN+3). The region is a global leader in digital financial services, and economic and financial links among ASEAN+3 markets are growing. The publication discusses the opportunities and risks of digitalization, explores how to manage financial integration in the digital era, and identifies changes in regulations and supervision needed to reduce risk and successfully transform the traditional banking model.

This publication analyzes the evolution of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) in Asia and the Pacific, assesses their potential risks and technical challenges, and explores their potential to improve cross-border payments and financial inclusion. Ahead of the launch of any large-scale Asian CBDC, it details various models and explores how Cambodia, the People’s Republic of China, Singapore, and Thailand are taking the lead. Outlining global developments and emerging trends, it shows why a robust digital infrastructure, strong public-private collaboration, and fintech literacy are central to ensuring CBDCs help drive the transition to a digital economy.

The ASEAN-5 region, which comprises Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, has benefited substantially from its integration to the world economy, particularly through trade. Rising risks of geoeconomic fragmentation could reverse some gains reaped from globalization over the past decades. In this context, advancing regional integration among ASEAN-5 members has the potential to enhance the region’s resilience against external headwinds. This paper shows that despite sizeable progress, particularly in regional trade integration, there is room to advance financial integration, which also lags trade integration in ASEAN-5. Empirical findings from the paper illustrate that a higher degree of regional financial integration could generate sizeable output gains for the region. Using firm-level data, the paper highlights that digitalization, an area where the region is thriving, can support regional integration by helping firms better integrate into global value chains, with the benefits being stronger for small and medium sized enterprises. The results also suggest that digitalization can help firms move up the value chain through the production of more sophisticated products, often coined as higher export sophistication.

Topics discussed in this collection include financial inclusion in under-served markets, financial inclusion products and services, financial inclusion for sustainable and responsible business, micro, small, and medium-sized business practices.

Decentralised finance, including crypto-asset markets and DeFi protocol activity, has been promoted as a tool to support the democratisation of finance. This report presents quantitative evidence from ASEAN economies that participation in decentralised finance markets has been largely driven by speculative forces and a fear of missing out, rather than by practical use-cases that can promote financial inclusion.

Economic Outlook for Southeast Asia, China and India 2022 addresses financing sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is proving to be extremely costly, both economically and socially and sustainable financing solutions are crucial for an equitable and inclusive recovery.

The rapid advent of digital money (DM) and assets raises questions about its implications for the functioning of the international monetary system (IMS). The low transaction costs of digital technologies, their accessibility and ease of automation, and their integration into existing digital services may bring opportunities in the form of higher financial interconnectedness and inclusion but may also add to risks. This paper explores the possible implications of DM for the IMS from the perspective of cross-border payments, international reserves and the supply of global safe assets, and the global financial safety net. To help inform the discussion, the paper presents empirical analyses of the effect of payment efficiency on international currency adoption for payment/transaction purposes as well as on reserve currency holdings, along with an illustrative modeling scenario of a DM-induced shock for the potential demand for global financial safety net resources.

As ASEAN Vision 2020 proclaims, the members of ASEAN have achieved remarkable success in economic growth, stability and poverty reduction, over the past decades. There are, however, still diverse debates as to the factors which contributed to the success, with no conclusive assessment.This volume reviews the domestic reforms effectively introduced by ASEAN members after the 1997 financial crisis and what could be done to accelerate such reforms. With the entry of the 4 new members into ASEAN, possible measures to strengthen both intra- and extra-ASEAN regional cooperation frameworks are sought so that the 10 ASEAN members can make a smooth economic and social transformation to tackle globalization and accommodate the two highly competitive giant economies, China and India.The study also seeks to identify what could be the role of Japan in promoting its economic relations with the ASEAN-10 under the ongoing framework of the WTO and the ASEAN-Plus-Three in the light of the current trend towards greater regionalism in Europe and the Americas.

This book focuses on the recent rise of new regional economic institutions such as the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which were established, in part, as a result of dissatisfaction of dynamic emerging markets with global economic institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the GATT/WTO. The latter were formed by advanced economies in the West, after the historic Bretton Wood Conference of 1944. In doing so, the book addresses how this recent round of decentralisation, defined as the co-existence of “senior” global institutions and a plethora of newly-established regional institutions, has affected global economic governance, and the delivery of global public goods. It also poses the question if this has led to the fragmentation of global economic governance. The book adds value to existing literature by using a benefit-risk analytical framework to study the decentralisation process. Unlike the “contested multilateralism” argument used by some authors which focuses on the costs of decentralisation, the authors argue that benefits must also be considered. It also describes and analyses the establishment of global and regional international economic institutions and the evolving relationships between the two. Third, the authors argue that this decentralisation process will continue in the postpandemic period and recommend policies to reset the relationship between global and regional institutions. And lastly, the book discusses proposals to reform the international monetary system including the global reserve system with a view to reducing the hegemony of the US dollar. Throughout the book, the role for Asia is also identified, and elaborated on.