Provides some background on the various financial market segments of the Asian Pacific region. This book offers an understanding of institutional detail (size and scope) of the relevant markets and affords a view that lends or detracts from the credibility of intermarket comparisons.

Contents include an overview and policy recommendations; case studies which include Australian content; international perspectives; and issues and findings.

The financial markets of Hong Kong and Singapore are leading examples in Asian financial development and regulation. Shanghai, which is developing its Free Trade Pilot Zone, is equally aiming to incorporate a sophisticated service market in order to upgrade, reform and reinvigorate the current economic model of development in China in the aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis. Streamlining administrative regulation is a precondition for its financial market to find root and play a central role in Asia and beyond. Finance, Rule of Law and Development in Asia offers a contextualized approach to the economic and political realities within Asian financial markets, especially in these three different jurisdictions. The volume adopts a comparative and precise account on the prospects and challenges in further developing these financial centres.

East Asian countries are now pursuing greater formal economic institutionalization, weaving a web of bilateral and minilateral preferential trade agreements. Scholarly analysis of “formal” East Asian regionalism focuses on international political and economic factors such as the end of the Cold War, the Asian financial crisis, or the rising Sino-Japanese rivalry. Yet this work pays inadequate attention to the strategies of individual government agencies, business groups, labor unions, and NGOs across the region. Moreover, most studies also fail to adequately characterize different types of trade arrangements, often lumping together bilateral accords with minilateral ones, and transregional agreements with those within the region. To fully understand this cross-national variance, this book argues that researchers must give greater attention to the domestic politics within East Asian countries and the U.S., involving the interplay of these subnational players. With contributions from leading country and regional trade specialists, this book examines East Asian and American trade strategies through the lens of a domestic bargaining game approach with a focus on the interplay of interests, ideas, and domestic institutions within the context of broader international shifts. With respect to domestic politics, the chapters show how subnational actors engage in lobbying, both of their own governments and through their links to others in the region. They also trace the evolution of interests and ideas over time, helping us to generate a better understanding of historical trends in the region. In addition to scholars of East Asian and comparative regionalism, this book will be of interest to policy-makers concerned with international trade and U.S.-Asia relations, and those interested in understanding the rich trade institutional landscape that we see emerging in the Asia-Pacific.

This volume of "International Finance Review" focuses on the Asia-Pacific financial markets. A total of 22 original papers, not published elsewhere, have been selected from a competitive field. These papers utilize a variety of methods, including theoretical, empirical and qualitative to highlight a range of issues across the region. Several papers offer combinations of these different categories and among the empirical papers, there are a wide variety of datasets analyzed. While China does play a significant part in the analysis of five of the papers in this volume (this is to be expected given its importance in the region), a host of other countries are also considered. This ensures the volume is truly international in its scope. These papers each serve to contribute to the knowledge on a particular issue related to the financial markets within this region and for this volume, three main issues have been identified: integration, innovation and challenges. Articles are contributed by experts in their fields. It is truly international in scope.

Emerging and frontier financial markets in the Asia-Pacific region have experienced significant changes in recent years in areas affecting regulation, market participants, and products. This collection presents perspectives from authors in local markets who provide their analysis of the history, current development, and future outlook for 11 countries: Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. The brief should be particularly valuable for prospective investors interested in learning about regulatory developments, market structure, and financial history in the region.