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This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate sustainability performance and earnings management in emerging East Asian economies.

The authors base on the triple bottom line approach to measure corporate sustainability performance. In terms of earnings management, two models are applied to detect real activities manipulation and discretionary accruals. The authors use panel data analysis of 410 listed non-financial firms in emerging East Asian economies from 2016 to 2020 that are collected from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database.

The authors find a negative influence of corporate sustainability performance on real activities manipulation and discretionary accruals. The findings highlight the long-term perspective of sustainable development strategies in relation to earnings management. The authors conclude that sustainable firms in emerging East Asia are less likely to engage in earnings management.

The study would be of interest to investors who need more detailed assessments of financial reporting quality to facilitate their investment decision-making and to policymakers who need more understanding of business practices and reporting behaviors of East Asian firms.

The study has shed light on the role of corporate sustainability performance in constraining earnings management and the role of corporate ethics in providing transparent and reliable financial reporting in emerging East Asian economies.

States that since the mid‐1980s, substantial deregulation and competitive liberalization of the South‐East Asian economies in their trade and investment regimes has resulted in greater integration of their economies with the North‐East Asian economies. Proposes that, together with the rising purchasing power of the expanding middle class, massive infrastructural development, as well as the expansion in intra‐regional trade and investment, East Asia has emerged as an independent centre of growth in the global economy since the early 1990s. Presents empirical evidence on the rise of this autonomous growth momentum. Contends that, no longer a mere wagon hitched to the locomotive of the US and European economy, East Asia′s emerging independent engine of growth has tremendous implications for executives of multinationals keen to expand market share and form strategic alliances with companies in East Asia. Submits that it also has implications for fund managers in the OECD countries keen to look to the region for asset diversification and higher returns.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the reasons and development trend of the new round of restructuring of regional division of labor in East Asia after the global financial crisis and the role of China in the process.

The paper probes into four factors leading to the adjustment of regional division of labor in East Asia before analyzing its development trend trough comparing the change of roles of China and ASEAN in the process.

After the flying-geese division and regional production network, East Asia’s regional division of labor is getting a new round of structural adjustment. The analysis of this paper shows that this adjustment is mainly due to global financial crisis, post-crisis de-globalization, the rebalancing of East Asian economies and China’s economic transformation. From the adjustment direction, the main trend is ASEAN gradually replacing China to become the new assembly plant area, while China becomes a new manufacturing power by its rising status in the global value chain.

The paper describes the development trend of the new round of restructuring of regional division of labor in East Asia in the future and gives the policy implications for the East Asian countries.

Since the 1980s the economic development of countries in East Asia has had a marked impact on the world port community, particularly in container transport. This paper analyses changes in the competitive environment of the world container port sector using some standard tools of market concentration. Initially, this paper reviews the competitive position of world container port system and then examines the East Asian economic environment. Both ordinal and cardinal measures of port system inequality are used to demonstrate both the rankings and levels of container throughput have been diverging in the world's major economic blocs. Conversely, East Asian countries during the 1990s have shown a trend towards convergence. Measures of dispersion suggest that ports in East Asian countries have become more competitive in their levels of container throughput.

This chapter discusses the nature of International and Comparative Education in East and South East Asia through the different organizations, networks, and programs formed to cater to the field. It gives an overview of the existing networks in international and comparative education, related activities, and studies instituted to strengthen the field in the region. Given the more developed network in East Asia, this chapter also highlights the increasing importance of international and comparative education in South East Asia, through the broader base of objectives also defined in the Association of South East Asian Nation (ASEAN) Economic Community (AEC) of 2015. Opportunities and policy reorientations (in education) set to present and utilize the field in both regions are also examined.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of board characteristics on environmental performance in manufacturing firms of the emerging East Asian markets. The authors adopt a triple perspective of environmental performance that focusses on three major environmental areas including resource reduction, emission reduction and product innovation.

The authors consider three main board characteristics, namely, board size, board independence and board leadership structure, and investigate their impacts on a multidimensional construct of environmental performance. Specifically, both linear and quadratic functions are applied to address a possibility of the non-linear relationship between board size and environmental performance. The authors use fixed-effects estimations on a sample of manufacturing firms in the emerging East Asian countries between 2011 and 2016.

The study explores an inverse U-shaped relationship between board size and environmental performance. The authors also reveal that manufacturing firms are more likely to have better environmental performance when the proportion of independent directors on board increases. However, the separation of CEO and board chair roles has no impact on environmental performance.

The findings have important implications by identifying the role of a board of directors in implementing environmental protection strategies and by providing a foundation for corporate efforts to enhance sustainable development.

The study provides complete understanding of environmental performance as a multidimensional construct and sheds light on the influence of board characteristics, especially the inverse U-shaped influence of board size, on environmental performance in the East Asian manufacturing industries.

This paper identifies the new economic force regenerating the East Asian economies in the post‐crisis era. Based on the convergence of five main economic indexes, it reclassifies the ten East Asian entities into four tiers, and highlights the language similarities among the tiers. It also discusses the inter‐ and intra‐regional economic dynamics, and the implications on further regional trade/investment, financial cooperation and monetary integration, such as a possible unifying Asian currency.

The 1997-98 financial crisis has had a profound effect on how East Asian economies the role of the IMF and its strategic interests relative to those of the United States in the international financial regime. It has prompted them to create a regional mechanism for financial and monetary cooperation, ranging from deeper policy dialogue and surveillance, to a system of financial cooperation, and common exchange rate arrangements. This paper analyses the economic and strategic motivations behind this and outlines recent developments in financial cooperation in East Asia to provide possible directions for the future.

A network of bilateral swap arrangements under the Chiang Mai Initiative(CMI) needs stronger policy dialogue and surveillance to develop into a regional financing facility, a sort of East Asian IMF. The facility plays a role as an regional lender of last resort, providing short-term funds to a member country facing a temporary liquidity shortage and for market intervention to stabilize foreign exchange rate. East Asian countries need to achieve regional exchange rate stability. In the long run, the region may develop a common currency arrangement, but it cannot be expected in the very near future because there is no convergence of macroeconomic conditions, economic structure and systems. A realistic approach would be for East Asian developing countries to adopt a currency basket system to minimize the impact of dollar/yen exchange rate volatility on their economies. Strong political will and a vision for regional integration will be required to introduce it.

Presents an essay on Asia Pacific Economic Co‐operation (APEC), an innovative and flexible form of co‐operation designed to accommodate the diversity of the economies on the Pacific Rim. The main challenge for the APEC process is finding a workable compromise between different approaches to economic co‐operation. Points out that the structure of APEC will need great flexibility to accommodate the declining influence of the USA in the Asia Pacific and the increasing strength of the Chinese and South East Asian economies compared to both Japan and the USA. Appendix contains an executive summary of the targets which were agreed by APEC governments, at Bogor, Indonesia, in 1994, in order to realize their vision of free and open trade and investment.