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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 seek to find answers to three questions. First, is there any possibility of long-term cointegration between East and Southeast Asian equity markets? If so, how many cointegrating equations are there? Second, what are the short-term causal relationships between equity markets in East and Southeast Asia? Third, what is the East Asia’s most influential equity market toward their Southeast counterparts, and vice versa?

This study uses Johansen's (1988) cointegration method to test long-run relationships among East and Southeast Asian equity markets. With regards to short-run causal relationships, this study uses Granger-causality test as well as the forecast variance decomposition method.

Johansen test proves that there is cointegration between East and Southeast Asian equity markets, but the integration process is not complete. Cointegrating vector also provides evidence that member countries of ASEAN+3 respond differently to external shocks. With regards to short-run causal direction, this study finds that Japan Granger-causes all equity markets in Southeast Asia, while Singapore and Vietnam Granger-cause all equity markets in East Asia. These results imply that Japan is the market with most linkages in Southeast Asia, while Singapore and Vietnam are the markets with most linkages to East Asia. Furthermore, forecast variance decomposition reveals that Japan is the East Asia’s most influential equity markets, while Singapore is the most influential equity market in Southeast Asia. This study suggests that policymakers in East and Southeast Asian countries to synchronize the capital market standards and regulations as well as to reduce the barriers for capital mobility to spur the regional equity market integration.

Increasing integration of East and Southeast Asian capital markets forces policymakers in ASEAN+3 countries to synchronize monetary policies, as it has been found that regionally integrated capital markets reduce the degree of independent monetary policy (Logue et al., 1976). It is therefore important for policymakers in East and Southeast Asian countries to assess the possibility of stock market integration within this region to anticipate the future risks associated with economic integration as well as to build collective regional institutions (Wang, 2004). Click and Plummer (2005) also argued that integrated stock markets is more efficient than nationally segmented equity markets, and the efficiency of Asian capital markets has been questioned in particular after the 1997 Asian financial crises. Yet, the empirical evidence on the extent of financial integration among ASEAN+3 member countries has been limited and inconclusive. This study is therefore an attempt to investigate the recent development of ASEAN+3 equity markets integration.

This study focuses its attention on the existence and the extent of financial integration in East and Southeast Asia region, and it provides evidence that equity market integration in ASEAN+3 is far from complete, and for that reason, there is a need for policymakers in ASEAN+3 member countries to synchronize their standards and regulations. Furthermore, the policymakers in East and Southeast Asia can gain benefit from this study, as it provides the evidence that ASEAN+3 member countries respond differently to policy shocks, which may hinder the development of regional financial integration as well as the policy effectiveness of region-wide authority in ASEAN+3.

This research is different from previous studies, as it puts the regional financial integration within the context of ASEAN+3 frameworks. Unlike previous research that considers East and Southeast Asian countries as an individual entity, this research considers East and Southeast Asia into two different blocks, following Tourk (2004) who documented that negotiation process for ASEAN+3 financial integration is conducted in sub-regional level (ASEAN vs East Asia), rather than national level (country per country basis). Second, this study covers the period after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. As suggested in Wang (2014), that the degree of stock market integration tends to change around the periods marked by financial crises, the updated study on Asian financial integration in the aftermath of 1997 financial crises is important to document the development of regional financial integration.

This chapter uses new data sets to analyze labor market integration between 1882 and 1936 in an area of Asia stretching from South India to Southeastern China and encompassing the three Southeast Asian countries of Burma, Malaya, and Thailand. We find that by the late nineteenth century, globalization, of which a principal feature was the mass migration of Indians and Chinese to Southeast Asia, gave rise to both an integrated Asian labor market and a period of real wage convergence. Integration did not, however, extend beyond Asia to include core industrial countries. Asian and core areas, in contrast to globally integrated commodity markets, showed divergent trends in unskilled real wages.

This paper argues that one must be careful in drawing lessons from the development experience of East and Southeast Asia. The economic strategy followed by these countries was not one of free trade, or even simulated free trade. Instead, in these countries key conditions were created which provided hospitable environments for investment coordination. It was the ensuing boom in investment which generated rapid economic development. The current economic problems of this region are not the result of corrupt states or crony capitalism, none of which are new to the region, but the result of an inability to engage in economic restructuring

The leaders of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced to negotiate a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECP) in November 2012, which is comprised of 10 ASEAN Member States (Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar) and its six FTA partner countries (China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and India). Embedded in the ASEAN Charter and implemented in all existing ASEAN + 1 FTAs, the ASEAN Centrality has been a corner stone principle in ASEAN-centric economic initiatives. Emerging discord in the region, complicated security climate and the rise of China, among others, have put the ASEAN Centrality under challenge. The development of the RCEP provides a timely case to assess ASEAN’s leadership role in creating the world’s most populous Free Trade Area. The RCEP may enhance ASEAN’s central role, but ASEAN needs to address challenges facing the regional integration now and beyond 2015. On the country/economy level, the chapter reviews some ASEAN Member States and their FTA Partners how they practice their ASEAN policy and seek leadership role in ASEAN. The three major players in ASEAN-Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia have reiterated the importance of the ASEAN Centrality in their foreign policy in the past, but debates emerge whether, such as in Indonesia, ASEAN Centrality best suits the national interests. The chapter also explores how the major powers, including China and the United States, respond to and collaborate with the group of smaller developing country players.

This paper reappraises the global and regional integration for 6 Southeast Asian stock markets. A time‐varying analysis based on Barari (2004) suggests that Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand have shown significant movement towards international financial integration.The estimates based on TARCH model imply significant support for returns and volatility spillover effects from the World as well as regional markets to all the stock markets except Pakistan. The stock market liberalization measures such as First Country Fund, First Depository Receipt, and First Cross Listing appeared to have induced more positive return spillover effects from the World to India, Indonesia and South Korea. These results have policy implication for the international portfolio investors in sense that portfolio diversification advantages are rather less in Malaysia, South Korea compared to India and Pakistan which still provide higher returns through portfolio diversification.

This paper explores the impact of China’s growing prominence in global and regional foreign direct investment (FDI) fl ows on the Southeast Asian countries as investment locations. Providing internal social and economic cohesion is maintained, China is likely to exert a greater pull on regional FDI after WTO accession. To benefit from China’s success, the Southeast Asian countries will need to replace deteriorating individual locational advantages relative to China with a superior regional one. The ASEAN Free Trade Agreement or the Asian Investment Area or both are likely to be important policy solutions.

This study aims to understand the research data management (RDM) services offered by academic libraries in South Asian and Southeast Asian countries. This study aims to evaluate the library and information science professionals’ required RDM skills and the challenges faced with providing RDM services.

The research methodology for this study used a survey method with purposive sampling. Data were collected through online structured questionnaires, which were used to examine the current state of RDM services offered in academic libraries in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

South Asian and Southeast Asian region major types of RDM services provided were data repository, data management training, maintaining Web resources, data study and analysis, and promoting awareness of reusable data sources. Little attention was given to advisory services on data analysis/mining/visualization and supporting reproducibility and workflow transparency. The results indicated that most respondents agreed that metadata standards and data management planning skills were required for RDM services in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

This study is significant because it offers a comprehensive assessment of ongoing RDM services in academic libraries of South Asia and Southeast Asia. Most current literature focuses on best practices in developed nations. This study highlights the need for more competent and dedicated academic staff for effective RDM services. Library professionals can use this study to identify the gaps in RDM services and suggest formative measures to overcome such challenges.

Education to an international standard that can provide successful careers has arguably been the main drive of many parents to allocate scarce financial resources to the education of their progenies. Competition for high-calibre degrees has seen an explosion of opportunity in the private education sector. As many Global South countries do not have the equivalent control of standards provided in the United Kingdom (UK) by the Quality Assurance Agency, this can lead to dissatisfaction with the qualifications received in the Global South. This chapter aims to explore the factors influencing participation in higher education in the Global North versus the Global South, particularly where these relate to or vary by locality, and the relative influence these have on the propensity of the learners living in these areas to progress into higher education in local universities. The conceptual framework and methodology provided in this chapter show the differences between transnational education (TNE) as primarily a standalone or independent activity supported by a UK higher education institution (HEI)/provider versus being a collaborative effort between a UK host university and a South/Southeast Asian HEI university partner. The methodology provides a strategy for UK host institutions to best provide carefully aligned independent or collaborative partnerships with the partner country regulatory bodies. The chapter concludes with the author’s personal reflections and recommendations based on decades of collaborative and independent university provision of TNE. These reflections are focused on design-based courses in selected South/Southeast Asian HEI partnerships with the College of Architecture and Design at Birmingham City University.

Examines the economy of Southeast Asia during the period 1997 to 1999 against a background of socio‐economic theory and a transition from disequilibrium to general stable and equilibrium conditions. Discusses solutions towards establishing self‐regulating mechanisms needed for a free, just and stable economy and society: reform of officially organized securities commodities and foreign exchange makets; reform of the public budget and budgetary policies; and reform of the foreign exchange system and internaitonal commercial and financial relations.