Markets

Economic performance in post-Suharto Indonesia has been inferior to that achieved during the previous three decades, with economic growth slower and income inequality increasing. With the recent election of a new president, now is a good time to focus on...

Japan is ageing; shrinking population will cause serious problems for the country throughout the 21st century. Although the fertility rate has recovered to 1.39, this is still very low by international standards. Current official projections estimate that Japan’s present population...

The South China Sea is not the central strategic element in the overall US–China relationship. It was clearly not a centrepiece of the November 2014 Obama–Xi summit in Beijing. Climate change, North Korea, Iran, Taiwan, trade, intellectual property theft and...

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking new ways to enhance India’s global diplomacy. Modi is pursuing two paths largely overlooked by analysts of India’s foreign policy: to connect with the Indian diaspora and to encourage links with subnational governments...

Falling commodity prices and better US economic data are the biggest macro drivers for EM, overriding just about all idiosyncratic variables – perhaps with the exception of the weaker yen for Korea. We note that aside from the huge fall...

Developments in the week ahead will be understood within the context of last week's developments.  The most important of these are the strength of the US jobs report and cuts in growth and inflation forecasts by the European Central Bank...

The US dollar changed little against most of the major currencies but is taking another step up against the yen.  The failure of the Democrat Party of Japan to mount a serious challenge to Abe, despite the quite divided public...

1) Some EM policymakers are becoming more worried about weak currencies 2) The PBOC failed to drain liquidity for the past three sessions, fueling speculation of a cut in reserve requirements 3) The Reserve Bank of India keep rates unchanged, but indicated...

In December 2013, despite an ongoing official review of its existing agreements, the Indian government signed a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) with the United Arab Emirates. Information on the deal was recently made public by the Ministry of Finance after...

The ECB has not announced any new initiative.  It stands ready to do more next year, but there was no specific mention of sovereign bond purchases.  There was no tweaking of the second TLTRO which will launched next week.  ...

Europe's economic crisis is slowly but steadily eroding the political systems of many countries on the Continent. New actors are emerging and threatening the supremacy of the traditional players. Alliances and events that seemed impossible only a few years ago...

The forthcoming ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) could help drive economic reform in the Philippines. But policymakers will have to embrace what could be difficult reforms and realise that ignoring them would raise the threat of being bypassed (again) by investment...

The meeting between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Xi Jinping at the 2014 APEC summit was a temporary relief for both amid rising bilateral tensions over the last two years. This talk was the result of both governments’ efforts...

The relationship between the state and economic enterprise is a central choice that governments have to make in all economies. The role of the state and state-backed or state-owned enterprise in Asia’s economic modernisation is a question of special interest....

With the broader dollar appreciation trend losing steam in last several weeks, the fall in oil prices has become the main external variable determining EM performance.  Russia, of course, is the weakest link amongst the major EM countries, but Malaysia...