• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.7 no.10
• /
• pp.591-599
• /
• 2020

This study examines how the health of the banks in ASEAN-3 countries namely Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand respond to the change in exchange rates and foreign interest rates in four large economies. The transmissions of the two external factors through domestic factors in each ASEAN-3 countries eventually affects Non-Performing Loan (NPL) of commercial banks. This study uses the monthly time series data and the renowned Structural Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model comprising five variables, namely exchange rate, foreign interest rate, domestic interest rate, money supply, and non-performing loan (NPL). The results indicate that there are different effects between ASEAN-3 countries, which can be classified as short-run effect and long-run effect. In the long run effect, external factors have a dominant role in determining NPL in ASEAN-3 countries. Yuan has the biggest effect on Malaysia's NPL, while Indonesia is more affected by European interest rates rather than the fluctuation of the US currency and China's interest rates. Among ASEAN-3 countries, Malaysia is the one that is the most vulnerable to external factors. While Thailand's NPL is affected dominantly by domestic factors. This study shows that the Fed Funds Rate (US official interest rate) is not always the dominant factor affecting the health of domestic banks in ASEAN-3.

• The Southeast Asian review
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.41-64
• /
• 2010

The recent global financial crisis triggered by the sub-prime mortgage debacle in the United States hit hard most ASEAN countries that have just recovered from the unprecedented economic crisis ten years ago. This paper, using individual time-series and panel data from 1990 to 2009, intends to investigate and compare the impacts of the two aforementioned economic crises on trade in the four developing ASEAN countries that encompass Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. In doing so, the paper traces the behaviors of main macroeconomic variables before and after the crises on graphs, and then estimates classical export and import demand functions that include real exchange rate, home and foreign GDPs as explanatory variables. In the estimation functions, two dummy variables are added to consider the effects of the two economic crises separately. Individual country data analyses reveal that by and large the 1997 economic crisis seems hit those ASEAN countries' exports and imports harder than the recent global financial crisis. Surprisingly the recent financial crisis turns out more or less statistically insignificant for those countries' export and import performances. The fixed effect model estimation using panel data of those four ASEAN countries also shows that the 1997 economic crisis had affected exports and imports of those countries negatively while the recent global financial crisis was not statistically significant. These results indicate that overall the effect from the 1997 crisis was more devastating than that of the recent global crisis for those ASEAN countries.

• The Journal of Information Technology
• /
• v.6 no.4
• /
• pp.135-146
• /
• 2003

In the era of so-called knowledge-based economy, the creation and utilization of IT and new knowledge are recognized as core factors to enforce IT industry and to increase national competitiveness. Advanced countries, therefore, have heavily invested their resources on IT sector and introduced competition into the telecommunication market. ASEAN countries are trying to make themselves informationized society through IT market liberalization and industry development. They are investing lots of resources to construct IT infrastructure such as wired and wireless network and consider informationized society promotion as top national agenda. In this effort, Korea is a benchmarking model for them. Successful entering into ASEAN market requires close analysis and correct understanding of its IT policy and infrastructure. In this paper, therefore, tried to analyse IT policy and infrastructure of three ASEAN countries, which have high potential of economic cooperation in IT with Korea. And based on the analysis, tried to find out ways to enter into ASEAN.

• Journal of Korea Trade
• /
• v.24 no.8
• /
• pp.63-80
• /
• 2020

Purpose - Recent empirical studies have shown that FDI is expected to be strongly associated with democratic governance, political stability, and sound macroeconomic conditions of the host country. We attempt to take it a step further to see if governments implement a major change in institutional characteristics, will the institutional reform toward better governance have a substantive effect in enhancing FDI inflows. This paper thus aims to analyze the importance of good governance as an important factor in the attractiveness of FDI inflows in ASEAN+3 (Korea, China, Japan) countries. Design/methodology - To determine the effects of good governance on FDI inflows across ASEAN+3 countries recorded between 1996-2018, the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) are used to investigate the impact of good governance on FDI inflows. The model has been estimated by using fixed effects to show the robustness of the results. Findings - Our main findings can be summarized as follows: Political Stability, Rule of Law, and Voice and Accountability have a statistically significant impact on the inflow of FDI in the ASEAN+3 Countries, especially for Korean economy. Moreover, GDP growth continue to exert their positive influence. However, Regulatory Quality, Government Effectiveness and Control of Corruption, though equally important, are insignificant to attract FDI inflows. The key finding is that good governance has a significant impact on inward FDI in the ASEAN+3 countries. Originality/value - Existing studies focus on the impact of political factors on FDI across countries. This paper instead attempts to investigate which type of good governance is the most important in promoting FDI inflows across ASEAN+3 countries, which is essential for multinationals to consider when choosing a foreign site as a possible FDI destination.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.781-791
• /
• 2021

This study aims to analyze the relationship between the business cycles of the ASEAN +3 countries. In addition, the effects of the spillover value on the coincident indicators are determined. This study employs secondary data and uses multivariate time series of five ASEAN countries, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. The proxy was the real gross domestic product (GDP) collected annually from the CEIC, the IMF, and the World Bank for the period from 1964 to 2016. The data was plotted against two time periods, 1964-1998 as the pre-crisis period, and 1999-2016 as the post-crisis period. The index data was changed to the base year 2010. The data was subsequently separated from the trends and the cyclic components. The cyclic components were obtained by using Hondrick-Prescott filter, and them were further analyzed. The analytical method used was Contemporaneous and Cross-Correlation tools. The results showed that, before and after the crisis, the value of the business cycle correlation between ASEAN +3 countries was stronger and moved together at the same level of lag value. The implication of this research was an initial finding of the ASEAN +3 countries' prerequisites for the formation of a common currency.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.731-740
• /
• 2021

This research aims to investigate the determinants of real effective exchange rate in emerging ASEAN countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The research was conducted by using quarterly time series data set from 1980Q1 to 2020Q3. Cointegration and the error correction model (ECM) methods were applied to test the long run and short run relationship of the real effective exchange rate and its determinants. The results indicate that the ratio of foreign direct investment to GDP and the government spending have significantly positive impact on real effective exchange rate in the Emerging ASEAN countries. The trade opening had influencing real effective exchange rate in most the Emerging ASEAN countries, except Vietnam. In addition, the international reserve (INR) had significant long-run impacts variables on real effective exchange rate in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. In the short run equilibrium, the error collection term suggest that Indonesia and Malaysia are the fastest speed adjustment to equilibrium. In addition, the term of trade influence the real effective exchange rate in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines but it is not in Thailand and Vietnam. However, FDI is a major factor of the real effective exchange rate in Vietnam, but not for other countries.

• Korea Trade Review
• /
• v.44 no.3
• /
• pp.289-305
• /
• 2019

Recently, each country has been using non-tariff barriers (Non-Tariff Barriers, NTB) as a new protection trade policy. In particular, TBT lies at the center of NTB. In this context, we examine the impact of Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) on Korea's exports to ASEAN. Using 10-year statistics from 2007 to 2016 that came into effect with the ASEAN FTA, we analyze the impact of TBT on the Korean exports in the electrical machinery industry (HS85), which accounts for more than 30 percent of Korea's total exports to ASEAN. The results of the empirical analysis using a gravity model showed significant and positive effects in the variables of GDP and real effective exchange rate in each ASEAN country on Korea's exports to ASEAN. As expected, the tariff rate has a negative effect. As for TBT, the key variable of this study, the results are as follows. Although many previous studies reported that TBT has negative impacts on exports, this study could not find any significant impact of TBT and found that Korea's exports of electrical machinery to ASEAN countries are not affected by TBT. Various implications of these results are suggested.

• Korean Journal of Comparative Education
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.123-151
• /
• 2018

The purposes of this study were to examine the current status of ICT in all ASEAN countries and to provide implications for Korea to find appropriate ways to support and collaborate with HEIs in ASEAN countries. To achieve these purposes, ASEAN countries were categorized into 3 groups based on the development stages of ICT, and the key ICT initiatives, current facts about ICT, and related issues were analyzed. The results of the study were as follows: Group 1 countries, Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore, with relatively well-established ICT infrastructure, have established their own ICT policies and initiated e-learning programs. Group 2 countries, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, which have relatively well-developed ICT infrastructure with existing regional gaps, showed different uses of ICT in higher education. Philippines and Thailand established their own policies based on national ICT master plans while Indonesia focused on MOOCs and Vietnam initiated cyber university projects. Group 3 countries, Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Myanmar, with the least developed ICT infrastructure in ASEAN, have also tried to develop national level strategies to utilize ICT in higher education. However, insufficient and inadequate ICT infrastructure created issues and challenges for these countries to successfully initiate ICT policies. This study suggested that it is necessary to take into serious consideration the national differences when collaborating with and supporting ASEAN countries due to the variation of ICT development stages and different levels of using ICT in higher education among ASEAN countries.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.313-331
• /
• 2017

This paper exhibits the concept of Triple Helix model to explain and link university-industry-government (Triple Helix) connections to national innovation systems theory. The driver of this paper is to test the dynamics of Triple Helix concept under national innovation system in the Association of South East Asian Countries (ASEAN)-5 economies. Panel econometric analysis with cross-sectional dependence (CD) test is applied to investigate the relationship amongst Triple Helix variables. The empirical analysis employs innovation indicators of five founding ASEAN countries namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand for the period of 2000-2015 from an existing WDI and WCY database. Econometric results support the two research questions of this study; firstly, there is a significant relationship between innovation outcome and its key drivers under Triple Helix context of National Innovation System in ASEAN-5 economies; secondly, the extent of the relationship among government R&D expenditure with high-tech productions are positive and significant while new ideas coming from universities as scientific publications and high-tech production have positive relationship but not significant yet in ASEAN-5 countries. Overall labor productivity is positive and significant with innovation outcomes in ASEAN-5.

• The Southeast Asian review
• /
• v.21 no.3
• /
• pp.139-203
• /
• 2011

This paper attempts to review of recent development of ASEAN financial integration and to evaluate it and predict its future aspect. For this purpose, we first examine the historic aspect of ASEAN financial integration such as ASEAN financial service open agreement or ASEAN capital market forum report and currently agreed integration plan. In addition, we study the development stages of ASEAM member countries in terms of its economic size or income level. Finally, we look at the financial market and institutional aspect of ASEAN member countries and the recent development of global financial market. From these analyses, we find several important facts. First, it is true that ASEAN, in general, will enjoy the effect of expanding regional investment and improving the quality of financial service through the financial integration. We think that its long term benefit is too large for ASEAN member states to avoid. Second, as a result, it is certain that ASEAN will corporate further to make its financial market to be integrated in the future. Third, however, despite these benefits and continuing efforts, we expect that it will be very difficult for ASEAN to reach a stage of financial integration as suggested in the Blueprint of ASEAN Economic Community by the year of 2015. The large difference among member states in term of economic and financial development will not allow for them to reach a single goal within a short time. Instead, we expect the following scenario for the integration process will hold. First, ASEAN will reach an agreement on the institutional framework by 2015 and afterwards, slowly the markets will begin to integrate. Second, at the earlier stage, not all but some countries will start the integration process. We expect that the financial market of ASEAN 5 will first be integrated and other 5 will join to it later.