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We investigate fluctuations in the nominal effective exchange rates (NEERs) of East Asian currencies and the Asian monetary unit (AMU), which is computed as a weighted average of East Asian currencies during the global financial crisis. We find that NEERs were more stable for countries that continued to follow a currency basket system during the global financial crisis.

Furthermore, we investigate the relationships among NEERs, AMU, and AMU deviation indicators, which indicate the extent of the deviation in the exchange rate of each East Asian currency from a benchmark rate given in terms of the AMU. By comparing NEERs with a combination of AMU and AMU deviation indicators, we find that there is a strong relationship between them, both before and after the global financial crisis. These results indicate that a coordinated exchange rate policy aimed at stabilizing the AMU deviation indicators will be effective in stabilizing the NEERs of East Asian currencies. In this respect, the AMU deviation indicators, which indicate intraregional exchange rates among East Asian currencies, play a crucial role.

Because NEER trade weights are widely similar among East Asian currencies, a policy aimed at stabilizing a home currency against its NEER may lead to a coordinated exchange rate policy without a common consensus among East Asian countries. In the future, however, coordinated monetary policies should be considered along with coordinated exchange rate policies.

Bertrand Candelon is a professor in International Monetary Economics. He received a PhD from Universite Catholique de Louvain. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, he joined University Maastricht, School of Business and Economics in 2001. He has written extensive works in the area of international finance, in particular on contagion and on the analysis of financial market co-movements. He is one of the founders of the Methods in International Finance Network.

This study examines the relationship between managerial overconfidence and corporate financing decisions by constructing proxies for managerial overconfidence based on the track records of earnings forecasts in Japanese listed firms. We find that managers have the stable tendency to forecast overly upward earnings compared to actual ones and that their upward bias decreases the probability of issuing equity in the public market by about 4.7 percent per one standard error, which economically has the strongest impact on financing decisions. This tendency is observed when we employ alternative measures for managerial overconfidence and other model specifications. However, in private placements, the choice to offer equity is not always avoided by managers. This implies that managers place private equity with the expectation of the certification effect

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between Lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0 for small and medium size of enterprise in Japan and Brazil.

The authors conducted a quantitative survey (20 companies in Japan and 30 companies in Brazil) combined with a qualitative interview (2 companies in Japan and 15 companies in Brazil).

According to the quantitative study, 90% of them practice Lean manufacturing and 40% of them practice Industry 4.0. In the qualitative study in Brazil, four managers responded that the Lean manufacturing is a prerequisite for Industry 4.0 since any production process with waste cannot be productive, even with sophisticated digitalization technology.

The authors explored further the relationship between “defensive Digital Transformation (DX),” which is based mainly on Lean manufacturing, and “offensive DX,” which relates to customer value creation through Industry 4.0. This study clarifies the relationship and plays as a roadmap to develop better the manufacturing from current status to the vision of Industry 4.0.