Asian Economies at the Crossroads: Crisis, Transformation, Adaptation

Abstract

The East Asian economic crisis will prove to be an epoch-making event in the history of the economies directly affected, with possible indirect effects on others in Asia. Two years after the onset of the crisis there is some convergence, and yet some sharpening of differences of opinion at the same time in the diagnosis and prognosis of the ongoing East Asian economic dislocation. Convergence is observed in the assigning of faults both to domestic and international factors. The remaining divergences centre around the question as to which side, domestic or international, should be the focus of systemic reform and also around the nature and pace of these needed structural reforms in the crisisaffected economies.