Forecasting corporate financial distress in the Southeast Asian countries: A market-based approach

This study is conducted to investigate the prediction of corporate financial distress based on the Merton (1974) market-based Distance to Default (DD) model over the period from 1997 to 2016 which covers a range of economic financial circumstances, including the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) and Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The study focusses on the six largest countries in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), comprising of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Unlike previous studies which focus mainly on bankruptcy, this paper focusses on early warning distress indicators that signal distress well before bankruptcy. This is when firms experience difficulty in servicing debt as measured by interest coverage ratio (ICR) at a firm level and non-performing loans (NPLs) at a country level. Key empirical findings from this paper indicate that the market-based distance-to-default (DD) model is generally a good early warning indicator of financial distress in the following year, particularly for ICR, but that prediction accuracy varies between individual countries in the Southeast Asian region.     

关于东亚区域货币合作问题的分析

1997年的亚洲金融危机给东亚各国的经济带来了沉重打击。此后,东亚各国纷纷认识到开展区域内货币金融合作的必要性,并以此来增强抵御风险、化解危机的能力。这次亚洲金融危机改变了东亚国家的政策取向,区域经济一体化步入制度性安排的快车道,这也为东亚区域货币合作创造了条件。另外,美元区与欧元区的相继建立和运行不仅证实了最优货币区理论在实践上的可行性,也增强了东亚各国在货币合作问题上取得成功的信心。本文将要对东亚区域货币合作问题做以探讨分析,从而说明东亚区域货币合作的必要性和可行性。     

亚洲金融危机前中国资本外逃的影响因素——一个回顾性分析

文章利用计量经济模型,对亚洲金融危机前(1987—1997)我国资本外逃的影响因素进行研究,并对通过协整检验的模型拟合误差修正模型,以反映短期动态变化。研究结果表明,亚洲金融危机前,财政赤字、外汇储备状况和本币高估是驱动资本外逃的主要因素,我国资本外逃具备非经济衰退驱动特点。     

Job reallocation in Korean manufacturing: 1984–2014

This paper investigates the patterns of job reallocation in Korean manufacturing during the period 1984–2014. Utilizing establishment-level data from the Mining and Manufacturing Survey, we construct job flow measures and document the trend of job reallocation and test its efficiency. We first find that the pace of job reallocation has diminished since the Asian Financial Crisis. Although jobs were reallocated from less productive to more productive establishments overall, we find that the productivity-enhancing effect has also diminished over time. Although recessions are known to be periods of intense reallocation and restructuring, job reallocation was not particularly more efficient during recessions in Korea. It even decreased during the Great Recession of 2008 because the exit probability of low-TFP establishments was reduced.     

亚洲金融危机应对措施回顾与借鉴

本文简要回顾了1998年亚洲金融危机时我国采取的应对措施及其效果,并分析了当前我国经济中存在的突出问题和当前经济形势与亚洲金融危机时的不同,在此基础上提出了应对危机的对策建议。     

金融危机与东亚国家的公共行政改革

权威的行政体制在东亚经济增长中起到了积极作用，但1997年几乎席卷整个东亚国家的危机实际上反映了东亚国家的政府主导型经济中政府对于经济发展过度干预的弊端。随着东亚国家经济和社会的发展，各国的公共行政环境发生了巨大的变化，对东亚权威行政体制的改革不仅适应经济发展的要求，也适应社会的发展和解决政府自身存在的问题的需要。在权威行政体制的转型中，政府主导经济向市场主导经济的过渡、中央政府集权向地方政府分权的转移和政府职能方式的转变成为东亚公共行政改革的趋势。     

Exchange Rates and Economic Recovery in the 1930s: An Extension to Asia

Scholars have found a positive relationship between the magnitude of currency depreciation and the extent of recovery from the Great Depression for Europe and Latin America. The relationship between currency depreciation and economic activity during the Great Depression for Asian economies has not yet been explored. This paper examines this topic using data from 13 Asian economies: China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam. We find that Asian economies responded in a similar way to currency depreciation during the Great Depression as did European and Latin American countries.     

State Power and Private Profit: the political economy of corruption in Southeast Asia

This article reviews the extensive political and economic literature since 1990 on corruption in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. After considering each country's individual recent history of corruption, the article comparatively analyses the relationship of corruption in these countries with, respectively, the roles of the state, the private sector and external actors, democratisation and decentralisation, and the impact of corruption on economic growth and inequality. Our conclusion is that while economic liberalisation, democratisation and centralisation of state power influence the forms of corruption and its impact on national economic performance, they are neither necessary nor sufficient for its decline.     

Technology transfer in East Asia and its implications for regional cooperation∗

The importance of technology in economic development is indisputable. A large part of the developmental process in East Asian countries has been greatly accelerated by the transfer of technology from developed countries. This paper, based on detailed data obtained from selected samples of about 100 companies in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, examines several key determinants of the process of acquisition, assimilation and internalization of imported technology in business enterprises. Drawing on the findings, this paper also suggests several implications for regional cooperation in enhancing the process of technology transfer in East Asia.     

International monetary transmission in East Asia: Floaters,non-floaters,and capital controls

This paper analyzes the impacts of the United States (US) monetary shocks on East Asian countries using structural vector-autoregression (VAR) model. We find that the impacts of the US monetary shocks on East Asian domestic interest rates and exchange rates contradict conventional wisdom. The conventional exchange rate channel is unlikely to play much role in the transmission of the US monetary policy shocks to floaters in East Asian countries, excluding Japan. In these countries, the domestic interest rates respond strongly to the US interest rate changes, by giving up monetary autonomy, probably because of fear of floating. However, the domestic interest rate does not respond much in countries with fixed exchange rate regimes and capital account restrictions, such as China and Malaysia. This may suggest that the countries with fixed exchange rate regimes enjoy a higher degree of monetary autonomy, most likely with the help of capital account restrictions.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed:
Gordon Betcherman and Riswanul Islam, (eds) East Asian Labor Markets and the Economic Crisis: impacts, responses and lessons
Françoise Gérard and François Ruf, Agriculture in Crisis: people, commodities and natural resources in Indonesia 1996-2000
Gregory W. Noble and John Ravenhill, (eds) The Asian Financial Crisis and the Architecture of Global Finance
James Zhan and Terutomo Ozawa, Business Restructuring in Asia: cross-border M&As in the crisis period
Xiaoming Huang, The Political and Economic Transition in East Asia: strong market, weakening state
John A. Mathews and Dong-Sung Cho, Tiger Technology: the creation of a semiconductor industry in East Asia
A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, (ed.) Confronting Fiji Futures
Peter Drysdale, Yunling Zhang and Ligang Song, (eds) APEC and Liberalisation of the Chinese Economy
Heather Smith, (ed.) Looking Forward: Korea after the economic crisis
L. T. Jones and P. A. McGavin, Land Mobilisation in Papua New Guinea
Marcus Noland, Avoiding the Apocalypse: the future of the two Koreas
Delia Davin, Internal Migration in Contemporary China
On Kit Tam, The Development of Corporate Governance in China
Ross Garnaut and Ligang Song, (eds) China: twenty years of reform
Ramesh Adhikari and Ulrich Hiemenz, (eds) Achieving Financial Stability in Asia
Morris Goldstein, Graciela L. Kaminsky and Carmen M. Reinhart, Assessing Financial Vulnerability: an early warning system for emerging markets     

Who is the center of local currency Asian government bond markets?

This paper analyzes nine Asian government bond markets comprising Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia, in conjunction with the US, and determines the center market from among three candidates of Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Employing a multivariate GARCH model, we find that Singapore is the center defined as the market with largest comovements in yields with other local markets in terms of the dynamic conditional correlations, and with the largest effects on other local markets in terms of volatility spillovers. Neither Hong Kong nor Japan is the center.     

Overall and time-varying effects of global and domestic uncertainty on the Korean economy

This study analyzes the overall and time-varying effects of global and domestic uncertainty on the Korean economy by estimating constant parameter and time-varying parameter vector autoregressive models. Global and Korea-specific uncertainty are measured using the method proposed by Mumtaz and Theodoridis (2017). A rise in both the uncertainty measures has an adverse impact on the Korean economy by lowering stock market returns and output growth, and by creating inflation caused by currency depreciation. Quantitatively, the domestic uncertainty shock exercises a larger effect on the Korean economy than the global uncertainty shock, as the former uncertainty shock accounts for about one-fifth of output variation and the latter accounts for about one-tenth. Regarding time-varying effects, substantial increases in domestic uncertainty during the Asian Financial Crisis and global uncertainty during the Global Financial Crisis explain a significant part of macroeconomic fluctuations in Korea during those periods. This is because of the increased volatility of uncertainty shocks during these periods, rather than a structural change in the way these shocks affect the economy.     

The Spatial Impact of Cultural Distances on Home Bias across Asian Emerging Markets

Using a set of individual country-pair data on cross-border equity transactions between seven Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Australia) in the years 2002–2012, we document that investors are more likely to show similar extent of home bias across Asian emerging markets than the developed markets. The spatial panel regression analysis indicates that the spillover effects of cultural and economic distances are more significant than the effect of geometric distance. Investors’ familiarity about Asian countries seems to influence the similar extent of home bias across Asian financial markets, while not so in the developed countries. In particular, the spatial spillover influences of risk associated with cultural and economic distances are more prominent among the Asian financial markets than the developed countries. Our home bias model can be spatially applied to not only different regions but also to different types of investors in international portfolio flows.     

An overview of Asian equity markets

This study overviews the development of 11 Asian equity markets, namely, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Prior to the onset of the global financial crisis, the Asian stock exchanges were generally bullish, underpinned particularly by China's robust economic performance. Innovations in financial products and services have been growing in importance, as stock exchanges in these countries have been making a concerted effort to introduce new features and best practices, with the objectives of raising market efficiency, enhancing service quality, and generally bringing operations up to par with international standards. But the potential to realize or support market efficiency can only be possible within an adequate legal framework, a sound market infrastructure, and appropriate corporate governance mechanisms. Thus, many challenges are still to be overcome in the region.     

Saving dynamics in the Asian countries

This paper investigates empirically the factors that have influenced the savings behavior in the fast growing Asian economies—Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Both the short and long-run movements of savings are modeled during the 1960–1997. The empirical results of the analysis based on time series data may be summarized as follows: (i) foreign savings deters domestic saving both in the short and long run; (ii) savings does not Granger cause economic growth, except for Singapore; (iii) the effect of interest rate on saving in Asian countries is inconclusive and it reflects the extent of financial liberalization adopted in these countries; and (iv) in the long run the causality runs from foreign to domestic savings.     

Do US macroeconomic conditions affect Asian stock markets?

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of US macroeconomic conditions—namely, exchange rate and short-term interest rate—on the stock markets of seven Asian countries (China, India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and South Korea). We use daily data for the period 2000–2010. We divide the sample into a pre-crisis period (pre-August 2007) and a crisis period (post-August 2007). We find that, in the short-run, the interest rate has a statistically insignificant effect on returns for all countries, except for the Philippines in the crisis period. On the other hand, except for China, regardless of the crisis, depreciation has a statistically significant and negative effect on returns. When the long-run relationship among the variables is considered, for five of the seven countries (India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand), while there is cointegration in the pre-crisis period, in the crisis period there is no such relationship, implying that the financial crisis has actually weakened the link between stock prices and economic fundamentals.     

REARGUARD POLITICS: HONG KONG'S MIDDLE CLASS

This paper reports on the emergence of the middle class in contemporary Hong Kong First, it gives the historical background of the rise of the middle class in the 1970s. This historical background is important to our understanding of Hong Kong's middle class because it highlights its symbolic significance—the realization of the so‐called Hong Kong dream—in the context of the local society. It is also relevant to our understanding of the shaping of its political outlook. The second section explores why the middle class stayed away from politics when the future of Hong Kong and democratization were the main topics in the political agenda of the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, the paper rounds up its discussion by reporting on the new grievances of the middle class amid the economic downturn after the Asian Financial Crisis.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Tran Ngoc, Ca, Technological Capability and Learning in Firms: Vietnamese industries in transition
Bhanoji, Raom, East Asian Economies: the miracle, a crisis and the future
M., Ramesh and Mukul G., Asher, Welfare Capitalism in Southeast Asia: social security, health and education policies
Wang, Gungwu and John, Wong, (eds) Hong Kong in China: the challenges of transition
John H., Drabble, An Economic History of Malaysia, c. 1800–1990: the transition to modern economic growth
Gordon, de Brouwer, Financial Integration in East Asia
Gordon, de Brouwer and Wisarn, Pupphavesa, (eds) Asia Pacific Financial Deregulation
Jomo, K. S.; Greg, Felker and Rajah, Rasiah, (eds) Industrial Technology Development in Malaysia: industry and firm studies
Jomo, K. S. and Greg, Felker, (eds) Technology, Competitiveness, and the State: Malaysia's industrial technology policies
Colin, Barlow, (ed.) Institutions and Economic Change in Southeast Asia: the context of development from the 1960s to the 1990s
Gilberto M., Llanto; Rosario G., Manasan; Mario B., Lamberte; Jaime C., Laya, Local Government Units' Access to the Private Capital Markets
Paul D., Hutchcroft, Booty Capitalism: the politics of banking in the Philippines
Colin, Filer, (ed.) Dilemmas of Development: the social and economic impact of the Porgera Gold Mine 1989–1994
Theodore, Levantis, Papua New Guinea: employment, wages and economic development
T. S., Chan, (ed.) Consumer Behaviour in Asia: issues and marketing practice
Arsenio, Balisacan and Shigeaki, Fujisaki, (eds) Causes of Poverty: myths, facts and policies
Stephan, Haggard, The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis
Grant, Evans; Christopher, Hutton and Kuah Khun, Eng, (eds) Where China Meets Southeast Asia: social and cultural change in the border regions     

Bank lending and real estate in Asia: market optimism and asset bubbles

This paper investigates the Asian real estate price run-up and collapse in the 1990s. We identify financial intermediaries’ underpricing of the put option imbedded in non-recourse mortgage loans as a potential cause for the observed price behavior. This underpricing is due to behavioral causes (lender optimism and disaster myopia) and/or rational response of lenders to market incentives (agency conflicts, deposit insurance, or limited liability of bank shareholders). The empirical evidence suggests that underpricing occurred in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Consequently, these countries experienced a more severe market crash than Hong Kong and Singapore, where underpricing was kept under control by strong government intervention and/or more appropriate incentive mechanisms.