Regional Arrangements for Providing Liquidity in a Financial Crisis: Developments in Asia

Regional Arrangements for Providing Liquidity in a Financial Crisis: Developments in Asia Graham Bird and Ramkishen S. Rajan Given its potentially global significance and the attention that there tends to be towards things that go wrong, it is hardly surprising that most of the literature dealing with economic events in East Asia during recent years has concentrated on the crisis period of 1997 and 1998. This work has sought to gain a better understanding of why such crises occur and how best they can be handled if and when they do. Less attention has been paid to the more recent post crisis period. To what extent and within what time frame did countries in the region recover from the crisis, and, if there has been a recovery, can it be sustained? Drawing on the available evidence, this paper attempts to answer these questions. By implication, however, it also has something to say about the vulnerability of the region to subsequent crises and briefly considers what needs to be done to reduce this.