Asia Regional Integration Center

An additional 3 billion Asians could enjoy higher living standards, and the region could account for over half of global output by the middle of this century, says a new ADB commissioned report. This potentially promising future for the region, sometimes referred to as the “Asian Century” though plausible, is by no means preordained. A draft overview of the report will be unveiled and discussed at the Governors' Seminar in ADB's 44th Annual Meeting, Ha Noi. Click here for details.

This report, jointly prepared by ADB and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, aims to provide strategic guidance for emerging Asia’s participation in the G20 and related discussion about reform of global economic governance. It draws on important lessons from the global financial crisis to offer policy recommendations in areas of imminent challenge confronting the leaders from both old and emerging powers. Read the report.

ADB's flagship annual economic publication, Asian Development Outlook 2011, forecasts developing Asia to expand solidly over the next two years, even as inflation, geopolitical uncertainties and the need to develop new sources of growth present looming challenges to policy makers. In a special chapter titled "South-South Links", the ADB says that strengthening economic links between countries in the South can create new global growth that can take up the slack left by cooling demand from industrialized countries in the North. The report provides an analysis of economic performance for 2010 and offers forecasts for the 45 Asian economies that make up developing Asia. Read the report and news release.

Emerging East Asia's local currency bond markets expanded by 13.6% to $5.2 trillion in 2010, driven by strong growth in corporate bonds that helped to offset a decline in issuance by central banks and some governments in the last quarter of 2010. The latest edition of the Asian Development Bank's quarterly Asia Bond Monitor shows that growth has been broad-based. The region's local currency bond markets, excluding the People's Republic of China (PRC), expanded by 11.6% in 2010. Total bonds outstanding in the PRC, the region’s largest market, grew 15.1% to reach $3.1 trillion.  Read the news release.  Download the report.  

In the wake of the 1997/98 financial crisis, the Republic of Korea introduced an Early Warning System (EWS) to prevent the recurrence of a similar crisis. Hyungmin Jung and Hoe Yun Jeong examine the country's EWS and provide key lessons and policy recommendations to other national surveillance units seeking to improve their EWS. Read more.

Expanding trade with East Asia’s “Big Three” economic giants offers a new potential source of growth for ASEAN. In this paper, Gemma Estrada, Donghyun Park, Innwon Park, and Soonchan Park aim to qualitatively and quantitatively assess the different permutations of ASEAN’s free trade agreements (FTAs) with the Big Three. The two types of analyses both suggest that an ASEAN+3 FTA would deliver the largest economic benefits for the region. Read more.

Fei Han and Thiam Hee Ng use a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model to forecast real GDP, inflation, short-term interest rates, real exchange rates, and real equity prices for five Southeast Asian countries. They find that the forecasts from the GVAR model tend to outperform forecasts based on country-specific models. Read more.

In line with its goal to foster economic growth and cooperation in the region, the Asian Development Bank, with Robert J. Barro and Jong-Wha Lee, have collected a formidable group of scholars to describe how closely integrated Asian economies are and determine the real benefits of integration. Costs and Benefits of Economic Integration in Asia offers quantifiable results from the field's top economists on cooperation and integration in the areas of trade, investment, and finance in Asia. Download excerpt from the book. Read the book details.