Tax Policy and the Asian Crisis

Tax Policy and the Asian Crisis
Author: Mr.David C. L. Nellor
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 24
Release: 1999-02-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1451974450

This paper focuses on tax policy and the crisis in Asia in the context of globalization and technological change. Two sets of conclusions, specific tax reform measures and general lessons from the crisis, form the tax policy agenda on these issues. The complexity and volume of financial transactions, associated with the opening of emerging markets, have made tax administration a more challenging task. Just as strengthening financial systems must be a precursor to capital account liberalization, tax administrations clearly also require strengthening in such an environment. In many emerging markets the capacity to tax capital returns is limited. Tax administrators need to understand and monitor complex financial transactions that grew rapidly due both to financial sector liberalization and technological innovation. Traditional difficulties for tax administrators, such as transfer pricing, that had often been limited to natural resource sectors in developing economies, took on wider importance as local companies gained sophistication and developed offshore operations.

The Asian Financial Crisis

The Asian Financial Crisis
Author: Wing Thye Woo
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2000
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262692458

This book analyzes the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1999. In addition to the issues of financial system restructuring, export-led recovery, crony capitalism, and competitiveness in Asian manufacturing, it examines six key Asian economies--China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. The book makes clear that there is little particularly Asian about the Asian financial crisis. The generic character of the crisis became clear during 1998, when it reached Russia, South Africa, and Brazil. The spread of the crisis reflects the rapid arrival of global capitalism in a world economy not used to the integration of the advanced and developing countries. The book makes recommendations for reform, including the formation of regional monetary bodies, the establishment of an international bankruptcy system, the democratization of international organizations, the infusion of public money to revive the financial and corporate sectors in Pacific Asia, and stronger supervision over financial institutions. The book emphasizes a mismatch in Pacific Asia between investment in physical hardware (e.g., factories and machinery) and in social software (e.g., scientific research centers and administrative and judiciary systems). In a world of growing international competitiveness, concerns over governance will weigh increasingly heavily on unreformed Asian countries. The long-term competitiveness of Asia rests on its getting its institutions right.

The Asian Financial Crisis: Origins, Implications, and Solutions

The Asian Financial Crisis: Origins, Implications, and Solutions
Author: William C. Hunter
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1461551552

In the late 1990s, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia experienced a series of major financial crises evinced by widespread bank insolvencies and currency depreciations, as well as sharp declines in gross domestic production. This sudden disruption of the Asian economic `miracle' astounded many observers around the world, raised questions about the stability of the international financial system and caused widespread fear that this financial crisis would spread to other countries. What has been called the Asian crisis followed a prolonged slump in Japan dating from the early 1980s and came after the Mexican currency crisis in the mid-1990s. Thus, the Asian crisis became a major policy concern at the International Monetary Fund as well as among developed countries whose cooperation in dealing with such financial crises is necessary to maintain the stability and efficiency of global financial markets. This book collects the papers and discussions delivered at an October 1998 Conference co-sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the International Monetary Fund to examine the causes, implications and possible solutions to the crises. The conference participants included a broad range of academic, industry, and regulatory experts representing more than thirty countries. Topics discussed included the origin of the individual crises; early warning indicators; the role played by the global financial sector in this crisis; how, given an international safety net, potential risks of moral hazard might contribute to further crises; the lessons for the international financial system to be drawn from the Asian crisis; and what the role of the International Monetary Fund might be in future rescue operations. Because the discussions of these topics include a wide diversity of critical views and opinions, the book offers a particularly rich presentation of current and evolving thinking on the causes and preventions of international banking and monetary crises. The book promises to be one of the timeliest as well as one of the most complete treatments of the Asian financial crisis and its implications for future policymaking.

The East Asian Crisis

The East Asian Crisis
Author: Ms.Kalpana Kochhar
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 56
Release: 1998-09-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1451935544

This paper reviews macroeconomic developments during the first year of the crisis in east Asia and draws some preliminary policy lessons. The crisis is rooted in the interaction of large capital inflows and weak private and public sector governance. At the same time, macroeconomic adjustment in these countries has resulted in some surprising outcomes, including severe economic contractions, low inflation, and rapid external adjustment. The lessons for crisis resolution include the importance of tight monetary policy early on for exchange rate stabilization, flexible fiscal policy, and comprehensive structural reform. Crises are avoided by prudent macroeconomic policies, diligent bank supervision, transparent data dissemination, strong governance, and forward-looking policymaking, even in good times.

Economic Globalization and Asia

Economic Globalization and Asia
Author: Ramkishen S. Rajan
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2003
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9789812795168

The term OC economic globalizationOCO has been discussed extensively in the popular press, by business executives and by policy-makers all over the world. While academic economists have made some excellent contributions to specific, technical aspects of economic globalization, there appears to be a need for economists to discuss the broader aspects of the issue in a more accessible manner. Failing this, the general debate will be informed only by the writings of non-economists. That is the motivation for this book, which is a collection of essays on various aspects of economic globalization in general, but with specific reference to Asia. Contents: Economic Globalization: Finance, Trade and Taxation: Economic Globalization and Small and Open Economies: Finance, Trade and Taxation; International Monetary and Financial Issues in East Asia: International Capital Flows and Regional Contagion: Boom and Bust in East Asia in the 1990s; Liquidity-Enhancing Measures and Monetary Cooperation in East Asia: Rationale and Progress; Choosing the Right Exchange Rate Regime for Small and Open Economies in East Asia; International Trade Issues in Asia: The Nexus Between Trade Liberalization and Poverty in Asia; India''s Decade-Long Trade Reforms: How Does It Compare with Its East Asian Neighbours? (with Rahul Sen); Singapore''s Drive to Form Cross-Regional Trade Pacts: Rationale and Implications (with Rahul Sen); International Trade in Infrastructural Services in East Asia: Telecommunications and Finance; International Tax Issues in Asia: Economic Globalization and Taxation: With Particular Reference to Southeast Asia (with Mukul Asher). Readership: Policy-makers, businessmen, professionals and others with an interest in international economic affairs and international economic policy."

Financial Sector Crisis and Restructuring

Financial Sector Crisis and Restructuring
Author: Carl-Johan Lindgren
Publisher:
Total Pages: 103
Release: 1999
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781557758712

An IMF paper reviewing the policy responses of Indonesia, Korea and Thailand to the 1997 Asian crisis, comparing the actions of these three countries with those of Malaysia and the Philippines. Although all judgements are still tentative, important lessons can be learned from the experiences of the last two years.

Financial Crises and the Politics of Macroeconomic Adjustments

Financial Crises and the Politics of Macroeconomic Adjustments
Author: Stefanie Walter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107028701

This book explains why governments respond differently to macroeconomic problems and why necessary reforms are sometimes delayed until a serious financial crisis erupts. It argues that voter vulnerability to different reform strategies varies, and that these vulnerabilities influence the type and timing of governments' policy responses to economic crises. Empirical analyses at both the individual level across a broad range of countries and case studies of national policy responses to financial and economic crises in Asia and Eastern Europe support the argument.

Currency Crises

Currency Crises
Author: Paul Krugman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2007-12-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0226454649

There is no universally accepted definition of a currency crisis, but most would agree that they all involve one key element: investors fleeing a currency en masse out of fear that it might be devalued, in turn fueling the very devaluation they anticipated. Although such crises—the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, the speculations on European currencies in the early 1990s, and the ensuing Mexican, South American, and Asian crises—have played a central role in world affairs and continue to occur at an alarming rate, many questions about their causes and effects remain to be answered. In this wide-ranging volume, some of the best minds in economics focus on the historical and theoretical aspects of currency crises to investigate three fundamental issues: What drives currency crises? How should government behavior be modeled? And what are the actual consequences to the real economy? Reflecting the latest thinking on the subject, this offering from the NBER will serve as a useful basis for further debate on the theory and practice of speculative attacks, as well as a valuable resource as new crises loom.