In the summer of 1997, a tidal wave of economic problems swept across Asia. Currencies plummeted, banks failed, GNP stagnated, unemployment soared, and exports stalled. In short, the vaunted "Asian Economic Miracle" became the "Asian Economic Crisis"—with serious repercussions for nations and markets around the world. While the headlines are still fresh, a group of experts on the region presents the first account to focus on the political causes and implications of the crisis. The events of 1997–98 involved not just property values, financial flows, portfolio makeup, and debt ratios, they argue, but also the power relationships that shaped those economic indicators.As they examine the domestic, regional, and international politics that underlay the economic collapse, the authors analyze the reasons why the crisis affected the nations of Asia in radically different ways. The authors also consider whether the crisis indicates a radical change in Asia's economic future.

The Asian crisis has sparked a thoroughgoing reappraisal of current international financial norms, the policy prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund, and the adequacy of the existing financial architecture. To draw proper policy conclusions from the crisis, it is necessary to understand exactly what happened and why from both a political and an economic perspective. In this study, renowned political scientist Stephan Haggard examines the political aspects of the crisis in the countries most affected—Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Haggard focuses on the political economy of the crisis, emphasizing the longer-run problems of moral hazard and corruption, as well as the politics of crisis management and the political fallout that ensued. He looks at the degree to which each government has rewoven the social safety net and discusses corporate and financial restructuring and greater transparency in business-government relations. Professor Haggard provides a counterpoint to the analysis by examining why Singapore, Taiwan, and the Philippines escaped financial calamity.

For students of international political economy, it is hard to ignore the growth, dynamism, and global impact of East Asia. Japan and China are two of the largest economies in the world, in a region now accounting for almost 30 percent more trade than the United States, Canada, and Mexico combined. What explains this increasing wealth and burgeoning power? In his new text, Ming Wan illustrates the diverse ways that the domestic politics and policies of countries within East Asia affect the region’s production, trade, exchange rates, and development, and are in turn affected by global market forces and international institutions. Unlike most other texts on East Asian political economy that are essentially comparisons of major individual countries, Wan effectively integrates key thematic issues and country-specific examples to present a comprehensive overview of East Asia’s role in the world economy. The text first takes a comparative look at the region’s economic systems and institutions to explore their evolution—a rich and complex story that looks beyond the response to Western pressures. Later chapters are organized around close examination of production, trade, finance, and monetary relations. While featuring extended discussion of China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, Wan is inclusive in his analysis, with coverage including Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines. The text is richly illustrated with more than fifty tables, figures, and maps that present the latest economic and political data to help students better visualize trends and demographics. Each chapter ends with extensive lists of suggested readings.

The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 shook the foundations of the global economy. What began as a localized currency crisis soon engulfed the entire Asian region. What went wrong and how did the Asian economies, long considered "miracles," respond? How did the United States, Japan and other G-7 countries react to the crisis? What role did the IMF play? Why did China remain conspicuously insulated from the turmoil raging in its midst? What lessons can be learnt from the crisis by other emerging economies? This book provides answers to all the above questions and more. It gives a comprehensive account of how the international economic order operates, examines its strengths and weaknesses, and what needs to be done to fix it. The book will be vital to students of economics, international political economy, Asian and development studies.

An examination of the political and economic causes and consequences of the Asian financial crises.

This book is a challenging volume by distinguished, leading scholars of East Asian political economy; it provides a distinct alternative to simplistic accounts of the Asian crisis which generally swing between an emphasis on convergence imposed by global economic forces, and the resurrection of the special patterns of East Asian economic governance. The authors argue that global forces and domestic structures are engendering new forms of economic and political regulation in East Asia. While these signal the death knell of the developmental state, this in itself does not presuppose a convergence towards a standard model of global capitalism. The arguments in this book will contribute significantly to the construction of a new research agenda for comparative political economy at the dawn of a new century. Politics and Markets in the Wake of the Asian Crisis covers a range of East Asian countries including the People's Republic of China, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. All the studies are linked together by a common endeavour to explore the dynamic interaction between global economic forces and domestic structures. The book is at the cutting edge of the study of East Asian political economy, and is distinguished by the attention it pays to the regional and international context of the crisis. It also contains theoretically sophisticated analyses of organisations such as APEC and the IMF.

Pt. 1. Towards a different approach -- pt. 2. US economic behaviour in Asia after the financial crisis -- pt. 3. Explaining divergent US economic interests.

This work examines the effects of financial liberalization of the more advanced economies in Southeast Asia and analyses the degree to which emerging and transitional economies in East and South Asia can benefit from this example.

Regional cooperation in East Asia on various issue areas, such as emergency liquidity mechanisms in finance, the exponential growth of free trade agreements and policy coordination on the environment and public health, developed rapidly after the Asian Financial Crisis. A decade later, the global financial crisis offered a new opportunity for the nascent regional cooperation mechanisms to acquire new depth and meaning - this time, however, in a very different context due to the unfaltering rise of China. How have inter-state cooperation mechanisms, which were devised originally to deal with the problems of the past crisis, fared in the recent global economic turbulence? Can regional integration effectively insulate East Asia from the vagaries of the international market? Should East Asian nations heed the call for regionalism or globalism? This volume not only offers one of the first assessments of how the global economic crisis has affected the prospects for regional integration in East Asia, but it also addresses a number of long-standing debates of interest to East Asian specialists, economists and policymakers: Are crises catalysts for revamping developmental models? Do they provide solid foundations for regional solidarity and integration? Can they help catapult countries into the global limelight? This book was originally published as a special issue of The Pacific Review.

This book analyzes the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1999. In addition to the issues of financial system restructuring, export-led recovery, crony capitalism, and competitiveness in Asian manufacturing, it examines six key Asian economies--China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. The book makes clear that there is little particularly Asian about the Asian financial crisis. The generic character of the crisis became clear during 1998, when it reached Russia, South Africa, and Brazil. The spread of the crisis reflects the rapid arrival of global capitalism in a world economy not used to the integration of the advanced and developing countries. The book makes recommendations for reform, including the formation of regional monetary bodies, the establishment of an international bankruptcy system, the democratization of international organizations, the infusion of public money to revive the financial and corporate sectors in Pacific Asia, and stronger supervision over financial institutions. The book emphasizes a mismatch in Pacific Asia between investment in physical hardware (e.g., factories and machinery) and in social software (e.g., scientific research centers and administrative and judiciary systems). In a world of growing international competitiveness, concerns over governance will weigh increasingly heavily on unreformed Asian countries. The long-term competitiveness of Asia rests on its getting its institutions right.