John M. Letiche

Lessons from the euro zone for the East Asian economies

Abstract This paper endeavors to contribute to the solution of the following critical issues: (1) what the East Asian nations can do in cooperation among themselves and with China, Japan, and South Korea in their foreign trade arrangements to improve the stability and growth of their economies; (2) what they must do individually to get their financial and real economies better integrated; (3) what they can do in cooperation with China, Japan and South Korea—bilaterally and regionally—to modernize their monetary systems and to render them more resilient to financial crises; and (4) what new focus of the IMF is most likely to enable the East Asian nations to maintain relatively free and open economies without the impact of catastrophic financial crises. Lessons from the development of the European Union, the dynamics of the euro zone, the experience of the Bank for International Settlements, and recent research on monetary and international macroeconomic theory are drawn upon to provide answers to these questions. It is argued that an area-wide approach, with a new IMF regional role and the formation of an East Asian Monetary Authority, would contribute to a sense of “community” within East Asia, leading to an enhanced role for both East Asia and ASEAN + 3 in the new world economic order.

CONDITIONS AND OBJECTIVES OF AFRICAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the conditions and objectives of African economic development. A fundamental objective of the new African nations has been the achievement of appreciable rates of economic growth with the transfer of political, economic, and financial control to Africans. The similarities in the factors responsible for the economic backwardness of most African countries are greater than the differences and it is possible to analyze their economic problems with a considerable degree of generalization. In all African countries, there is a critical, pervasive need for an expanded and more effective educational and training process—particularly in the primary and secondary schools—to overcome the overwhelming prejudices against manual work. A peculiar characteristic of the dual economies of Africa has been that a large part of the income earned in Africa was not spent in Africa but siphoned off to foreign countries. The conflicts of policy between the government and the central bank are inevitable at all stages of economic development but are especially serious in newly-developing countries.