NBER-East Asia seminar on economics ;

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 impact of financial liberalization in Japan, Korea, and Singapore, macroeconomic policy implications for financial management of export-led growth in Korea and Taiwan, the roles of the United States and Japan in trading with Asian countries, and the effects of foreign direct investment in China. 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.

Choice of an exchange rate regime is a central component in the economic policy of developing countries and a key factor affecting economic growth. Historically, most developing nations have employed strict exchange rate controls and heavy protection of domestic industry - policies now thought to be at odds with sustainable and desirable rates of economic growth. By contrast, many East Asian nations maintained exchange rate regimes designed to achieve an attractive climate for exports and an "outer-oriented" development strategy. The result has been rapid and consistent economic growth over the past few decades. Changes in Exchange Rates in Rapidly Developing Countries explores the impact of such diverse exchange control regimes in both historical and regional contexts, focusing particular attention on East Asia. This comprehensive, carefully researched volume will surely become a standard reference for scholars and policymakers.

This volume explores the macroeconomic experience of East Asia in the 1980s and the impact of the region's growth on the rest of the world. The authors examine variables such as current account surpluses and deficits, as well as the ways in which exchange rate fluctuations in today's global economy affect the economies of countries not only in the same region but across the globe. These fourteen papers are organized around four themes: the overall determinants of growth and trading relations in the region; monetary policies in relation to capital controls and capital accounts; the impact of exchange rates on industrial structure; and the potential for greater regional integration. The contributors cover topics such as interactions among exchange rate movements, trade balances, and capital flows in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, and the impact of exchange rates on industrial structure, inventories, and prices of both domestic and exported goods. One set of papers, examining the role of government monetary policy, reveals that when oil prices declined in Taiwan and the government loosened its monetary policy, growth increased without inflation. Another set of papers, focusing on the extent of regional integration in East Asia, finds that most of these nations' currencies are more closely tied to the dollar than to the yen. Macroeconomic Linkage offers a careful study of economic developments in East Asia that will be especially valuable to economists interested in international trade and exchange rates and to regional experts who focus on East Asia.

There is no doubt that after World War II the open multilateral trading system was a key ingredient in the rapid economic development of the entire world. Especially in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, exports increased dramatically both in absolute terms and as a percentage of GNP. In the 1980s, however, preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) began to emerge as significant factors affecting world trade. This volume contains thirteen papers that analyze the tensions between multilateral trading systems and preferential trade arrangements and the impact of these tensions on East Asia.