Much of East Asia continues to grow rapidly, driven to a considerable extent by China. Urbanization is proceeding at pace. Demand for infrastructure services is increasing massively, particularly in cities. Much of the demand comes from the newly urbanized poor. Infrastructure has to meet their needs, but has also to continue to provide the underpinnings for the region's growth. The complexity of responding to these demands is greater than ever, and the cost of getting things wrong very high. Poorly conceived infrastructure investments today would have a huge environmental, economic, and...

Since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, countries in East Asia have made efforts to promote regional monetary and financial cooperation to complement the evolving international financial architecture. This increased interest in regional monetary and financial cooperation has resulted in several initiatives - the ASEAN Surveillance Process, the ASEAN+3 Finance Ministers Process including its Chiang Mai Initiative of 2000, the Manila Framework Group and the Asia-Europe Finance Ministers Process to name a few. These developments in some ways represent a significant break from the past. Going...

Since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, East Asia has implemented a number of initiatives designed to strengthen monetary and financial cooperation, bolstering the region's resilience to economic and financial vulnerabilities. One such initiative is the ASEAN+3 Information Exchange and Policy Dialogue, which includes development of early warning systems (EWS) for financial crises. This book examines efforts to develop EWS models. Specifically, the book analyzes the current understanding of the causes of currency and banking crises, describes recent progress in developing and applying EWS...

Trusting Trade and the Private Sector for Food Security in Southeast Asia challenges policy makers who oversee the rice sector in Southeast Asia and reexamines deep-rooted precepts about their responsibilities. The authors argue that fixating on national self-sufficiency has been costly and counterproductive, and cooperation can both improve rice production at home and expand regional trade. Trusting Trade specifically examines private sector participation in the rice and (yellow) maize markets in five countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)--Indonesia, Malaysia, the...