Financial Big Bang in Asia

Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2001. The east Asian economies enjoyed "miraculous" economic growth in the 1990s, and were expected to prosper into the 21st century. However, this was not to be, there was a financial crash in the summer of 1997. The crisis spread from Thailand to the ASEAN economies, and then by the autumn it had reached the northeast Asian economies. Discussions on the causes of the crisis cover a wide variety of possible culprits: hedge funds, foreign exchange policy, dependence on foreign capital, bubble economies, corporate governance, underdeveloped financial markets, and so on. This book focuses on the Asian financial crisi from the long-term perspective of development of financial reform in Asia. The purpose of this book is to analyze and assess the financial crisis in the different Asian economies by comparing them from the point of view of long-run financial system reform, and to consider the future prospects of financial reform in Asia.