Emerging Asia: Hard Road Ahead?
In recent years, emerging market countries—in particular, those in Asia—have been among the global economy’s star performers. Even during bad times, such as during the Global Financial Crisis, Asian EMs have seen their economies hol...
Review of Isabella M. Weber, How China Escaped Shock Therapy
Routledge, May 2021.Isabella M. Weber’s “How China Escaped Shock Therapy” is a painstakingly researched but fundamentally flawed account of one key thread of the economic reform debates that took place in China during the 1980&rsquo...
Economics of the Pandemic, 2020 (Part III): Monetary Policy
Asia's response to the pandemic has rested largely on fiscal policy with monetary policy playing a facilitating role to varying degree. Fiscal policy is the subject of the second post in this series. The first post looks at factors influencing ...
Economics of the Pandemic, 2020 (Part II): Fiscal Policy
Asian economies have been hit differently by the pandemic and have responded differently by way of fiscal and monetary policy. The first post in this series traces differences in economic impact to differences in infection incidence, mobility l...
Economics of the Pandemic, 2020 (Part I): Covid Cases, Mobility Loss, and Exports
Why have the economies of Asia fared so differently under the pandemic? In 2020, the economy of the Philippines contracted by 9.5 percent and that of India by 8.0 percent. Meanwhile, Bangladesh achieved growth of 3.8 percent, Taiwan 3.1 percent, Viet...
The Complicated Question of COVID-19 vs The Economy
The logic is straightforward that policy interventions that seek to break the chain of COVID infection also lower economic activity. Frictions in value creation result from limiting operations for dining and entertainment outlets, curtailing travel, ...
ASSA 2022 Panel on Covid & Recovery in Asia
When: 7-9 January 2022, Boston, MassachusettsSponsor: American Committee on Asian Economic Studies
The Economic Costs of Low-Level Hostility in the Western Pacific
The western Pacific Ocean is not literally pacific—it is not peaceful. In the south, overlapping claims to rocky islets have led to clashes over oil and gas reserves and fishery resources between a half dozen countries. In the north, there are also c...
Is It Tantrum Time Again?
In May 2013, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, hinted at the possibility of the Fed reducing (“tapering”) its purchases of government bonds sooner than previously expected, leading to a reassessment of th...