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The current work studies the cause, process, and effects of financial reform in 10 countries in Eastern Asia for the period of 1993–2002, especially focusing upon comparisons between pre- and post-Asia financial crisis. This study utilizes Mann–Whitney U test and Intervention Analysis to explore the different effects of the changes of GDP, stock index, exchange rate, CPI index, and the changes of the unemployment rate before and after the Asia financial crisis. It shows the consistent relationship between stock index, exchange rate, CPI index, and the changes of unemployment rate.

This paper aims to solve the problem of reduction of disproportions of the global economy and overcoming the underrun of Asian countries from Europe. The author offers a hypothesis that the reason of such underrun is the existence of “underdevelopment whirlpools” in Asian countries. The purpose of this paper is to verify this hypothesis and to determine problems and perspectives of economic growth in Asian countries.

As tools for verification of this hypothesis, the author uses the methodology of analysis of “underdevelopment whirlpools”, aimed at the determination of problems and perspectives of economic growth in countries of Asia; methodology of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis for determination of key factors of economic growth in countries of Asia; instrumentarium of theory of games for the evaluation of effectiveness of the use of various strategies of economic development of Asian countries.

As a result of the research, the author proves the offered hypothesis and offers – as a solution to the problem of the existence of “underdevelopment whirlpools” in Asian countries – the use of new models of economic development in view of specifics of Asian countries, aimed at transition to new quality of economic growth.

A certain limitation of the conducted research is primarily theoretical substantiation of the necessity for overcoming the “underdevelopment whirlpools” in Asian countries and framework character of the offered recommendations. Therefore, during further research in this sphere, it is expedient to focus the efforts on the development of the system of practical measures for achievement of this purpose.

Practical significance of the author’s conclusions and recommendations consists in the possibility for their use during the development of state economic policy in Asian countries in the interests of overcoming the “underdevelopment whirlpools” and transition to the new quality of economic growth.

At the time of preparation of this paper, the concept “underdevelopment whirlpool” is rather new, and application of methodology of their calculation by the example of Asian countries in the context of analysis of problems and perspectives of economic grows constitutes the basis for originality, scientific value and novelty of the performed research.

The purpose of this chapter is to study the essence and specifics of the process of establishment and development of information economy in Asian countries and to create its conceptual model.

The process of establishment and development of information economy is studied based on the indicators that were systematized according to the basic elements of information economy. The indicators of technosphere (technological support) are the information and communication technologies (ICT) development index according to the International Telecommunication Union and labor efficiency in the ICT spheres according to the OECD. The indicators of sociosphere (social core) are the Internet level of society according to the World Wide Web Foundation and employment of specialists in the ICT spheres according to the OECD. The indicators of economic sphere (economic pinnacle) are added value of the ICT spheres and contribution of investments to the ICT in the growth of GDP according to the OECD, as well as the Index of Digital Economy according to digital single market. The indicators of the target result (efficiency of information economy) are expenditures for innovations in the spheres of the ICT according to the OECD, share of high-tech export according to the World Bank, and the index of innovational development according to the INSEAD, WIPO, and Cornell University. The research is performed by the leading countries (as per the socio-economic development index) of the Asian regions – China, South Korea, and Japan – on global economic system (according to 2017 data).

The authors concluded that the leading countries of Asia made progress in information economy’s formation, and the process in these countries has been unique, but common peculiarities allowed defining the Asian model of information economy.

It is recommended to use the offered conceptual model for studying the process of information economy’s formation in Asian countries and its comparison with the process in other regions of the world.

This chapter examines exchange rate options for East Asian countries, taking into account their real economic linkages as well as their international financial relations. Particular consideration is given to possible exchange rate cooperation within the region. For this purpose, the literature on the optimal peg is reconsidered and subsequently extended to include a country's international financial asset and liability situation. That is, instead of focusing solely on nominal or real effective exchange rates, the chapter proposes a blend of “real” and “financial” exchange rates for analyzing “optimal” exchange rate policy.

This chapter highlights the characteristics of Asia through the analysis of policy-related documents by five donor countries, namely Japan, South Korea, China, India and Thailand. It will also examine the roles played by regional bodies such as the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) and ASPBAE (the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education) as the horizontal channels influencing aid policies in respective countries. Together with the analysis of the national and organizational policies, the regional process of building consensus on the post-2015 agenda is examined, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific Regional Education Conference (APREC) held in August 2014.

The analysis reveals that the region has two faces: one is imaginary and the other is functional. There is a common trend across Asian donors to refer to their historical ties with regions and countries to which they provide assistance and their traditional notions of education and development. They highlight Asian features in contrast to conventional aid principles and approaches based on the Western value system, either apparently or in a muted manner. In this sense, the imagined community of Asia with common cultural roots is perceived by the policymakers across the board.

At the same time, administratively, the importance of the region as a stage between the national and global levels is recognized increasingly in the multilateral global governance structure. With this broadened participatory structure, as discussed in the chapter ‘Post-EFA Global Discourse: The Process of Shaping the Shared View of the ‘Education Community’’, the expected function of the region to transmit the norms and requests from the global level and to collect and summarize national voices has increased.

This paper aims to check the E-Government Development Index (EGDI) of South Asian countries and then highlight the main challenges they are facing right now, which are causing South Asian countries to do good in the e-government sector.

The authors will be getting the EGDI data for South Asian countries through the United Nations website, and to visualize it for understanding, the authors will be taking the help of an Online Business intelligence tool. After successfully fetching data and presenting it in a proper format, the authors will be doing an analysis of the South Asian country’s EGDI score overall and also will check on individual indicator levels of EGDI.

Finally, the authors will be sharing the common improvement points which South Asian countries’ governments need to focus on to make their EGDI score better and get included in the list of top E-Government. With its help, countries will progress and get hand-in-hand with the world by providing the best governance practices to their citizens.

It is important to understand for South Asian countries that the e-government initiative is not just about transforming governance or providing quality services to citizens but also it is about being in sync with the world and competing with other countries in the development progress. So, they have to follow the e-government trends to get their country aligned with the world and attain progress country in a faster speed.

The four Asian tigers, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan (also called Four Dragons) experienced miraculous high growth rates in the pre-1990s period and rapidly transformed their economic status from less developed “basket cases” to developed high-income countries gaining entry to the rich OECD club of countries. These countries even in the post-1990s, barring few years, have continued to grow further and are an inspiring role model for the newly emerging economies. The purpose of this paper is to adduce certain trends in these countries since the 1990s and specifically examine role of human capital and knowledge building, productivity convergence and intra-regional trade in the Asian tigers’. The authors examine these in the context of India.

The paper in a simple descriptive yet analytical approach explores the relevance of above factors in the Indian context.

The study observed that India ranks far below the Asian tigers in the knowledge economy index (KEI). The results at the sub-national level showed large disparities across the states in knowledge economy reflecting country’s difficulties in catching up with other countries overall. Regarding labour productivity, the results show that India was moving away from the benchmark country until 1990 (pre-reform period) and started catching up particularly due to physical capital (not necessarily human capital) since 1995 onwards.

The study is unique due to several reasons. First, it contributes to the literature examining contemporaneous Asian tigers and Indian economies performance as not many studies exist in this area. Second, the study also builds a unique first ever KEI at the sub-national level for India and is, therefore, a contribution in this respect. Finally, the study also contributes to the literature on Indian economic development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and cosmopolitanism (COS) may affect Asian consumers’ perceptions of out-group countries and their products, doing so by examining similar vs dissimilar countries across countries of origin. Given the strong inter-country rivalries that exist among Asian countries, the authors propose two alternative hypotheses, drawing from social identity theory and realistic group conflict theory.

To test the hypotheses, the authors examine consumer perceptions of both Western countries (dissimilar out-groups) and Asian countries (similar out-groups) within China (Study 1). In addition, the authors investigate how CET and COS affect consumer perceptions of Asian countries in Japan and in non-Asian dissimilar countries, and compare the effects between the two regions (Study 2).

The findings indicate that CET shows greater negative effects on perceptions of a country and its products, when the country is from a similar out-group than when it is from a dissimilar one. On the other hand, COS showed equally strong positive effects among consumers for both similar and dissimilar out-group countries.

The results suggest that Asian consumers feel a sense of intergroup rivalry with other Asian countries, and, as a result, exhibit a greater degree of ethnocentric biases toward these countries and their products than they do toward Western countries and products. Also, the results suggest that COS may transcend national differences and inter-country rivalries in consumer consumption tendencies.

The study examines inter-country similarities as a moderator of CET and COS effects, which has not been extensively researched in the past. In addition, the study discusses the concept of intergroup rivalry among neighboring countries and examines how it affects consumer perceptions of out-group countries and their products in Asia, where strong inter-country rivalries exist.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) by focusing on institutional and economic factors among South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as Central Asian countries over the period 2002-2014.

The generalized method of moments technique is employed for analyzing the impact of institutional quality on FDI inflow by controlling for the effect of market size, domestic investment and labor force.

The authors found large variations in terms of the impact of institutional and economic variables in regards to FDI in the SAARC, Central Asian and ASEAN regions. The results reveal that real GDP, domestic investment and economic freedom index have a positive and significant effect on FDI inflows in the SAARC region, while governance index and labor force have a negative impact on FDI inflows. In Central Asia, the real GDP, domestic investment and governance index are positively associated with FDI inflows, whereas the effect of economic freedom index on FDI is negative as well as insignificant. Apart from the GDP, other variables such as labor force, domestic investment, governance and economic freedom indices influence FDI positively in the ASEAN region. It is worth mentioning here that domestic investment produces positive effect on FDI inflows in all the regions. On the whole, the authors may conclude that institutional factors play an important role in attracting FDI inflows in the ASEAN region as compared to Central Asian and SAARC regions.

A limited research work is available that could help in identifying the role of institutional and economic factors simultaneously in attracting FDI in the SAARC, Central Asian and ASEAN regions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between factors that influence conducting business and the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Sub‐Saharan African (SSA) and Asian countries.

The factors of business climate defined by the World Bank in 2006 as ease of doing business were correlated with FDI flows to SSA and Asian countries.

Two factors, “registering property” and “trading across borders”, were found to be related to FDI over all six years of the study (2000‐2005) for the combined sample. Also, several factors were found to be related to FDI received by SSA and Asian countries during various years.

A limitation of the study is that the sample included only SSA and Asian countries.

The findings may help SSA and other countries to improve the business climate in terms of the factors of ease of doing business, in order to attract more FDI.

The paper provides empirical support to the hypothesis that FDI is related to some of the factors of the business climate. It advances understanding of the determinants of the inflow of FDI to African and Asian countries and may be particularly useful to international organizations seeking to do business in SSA and Asian countries.