This paper investigates whether the ¡§Taylor rule¡¨ can appropriately describe the Central Bank¡¥s monetary policy in Asia-Pacific countries. The countries under consideration were export-oriented countries that adopted floating exchange rate system, and affected by the Asian financial crisis. They include Taiwan, Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore. In addition we divide the sample period into two sub period based on the mid-1997 outbreak of the Asian financial crisis, to check the robustness of our results from the whole period. Furthermore, we investigate that the central bank cares for the quarterly inflation, or annual inflation. The results over the whole period showed that the Taylor rule describe Central Bank¡¥s monetary policy except for Thailand, Japan and Singapore. The Taylor rule can not describe Japan's monetary policy when the period before Asian financial crisis is adopted. Besides, in addition to Thailand, the central banks concerned quarterly inflation rates than annual inflation rates.

This purpose behind this study is to develop a model for forecasting the performance of the Taiwanese economy based on monthly time series data. We first extract the useful factors through factor analysis. Next, we rank the factor scores according to the rules of the trend and interpret the scores as signals to buy or sell appropriately. Our main result is that the Sharpe ratio of out-of-sample back-testing from January 2007 to December 2010 is 0.48, indicating an ability to forecast financial crises. In addition, a Sharpe ratio of 0.95 during the 2008 financial crisis suggests that our model may have been effective in predicting this crisis. Moreover, the macroeconomic factor model can provide better forecasting skills during financial crises. To conclude, this research may be of importance in explaining the relationship between macroeconomic variables and the business cycle, as well as in providing investors with better forecasting signals of the stock market in Taiwan.

Before a government makes economic policies, it must first fully understand the causality between energy consumption and economic growth. This study uses Chow Test, Unit Root Test, Co-integration Test, Vector Autoregressive Model, Vector Error Correction Model, Granger Causality Test, Impulse Response Function and Variance Decomposition to examine whether the relationships between energy consumption and economic growth for Taiwan and Korea had changed after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, in order to understand whether their economic policies have changed in response. Taiwan¡¦s energy consumption and GDP had one-way effect ¡V that is, her energy consumption affected GDP but not vice versa ¡V while that of South Korea exhibited a two-way relationship. However, after the Crisis, such relationship for Taiwan had changed to that of two-way. The relationship between energy consumption and GDP for South Korea remained two-way after the Crisis.

Since reformed of banking structure in China, banks have been gradually developed their operation system. Moreover, the restructure in commercial bank after joined WTO had established China¡¦s banks performance and international reputation. Since 2007, many large commercial banks have strength its risk management based on the commitments made by China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) to follow the New Basel Capital Accord. When the global banking industry is devastated by global financial crisis (GFC) during 2008, China¡¦s banks are less affected by GFC. In addition, the capital scale and revenues performance were thrived during GFC. Therefore, it shows that banks in China had improved the resilience ability during financial crisis. However, being originated in China¡¦s loose monetary policy and economic stimulus package after GFC, investors worried that domestic banks might bear high risks. Notably, the risk is specific risk from each bank instead of system risk. This study employs Markov regime-switching model to examine 14 China banks¡¦ stock prices. The empirical evidence supports our hypothesis that behavior of China banks¡¦ stock prices has confronted structural change after GFC. Furthermore, this research presents that unsystematic risks from each bank were significantly decreased after GFC. It indicates that investors are too pessimistic on the banks in China might suffer high risk after government interventions.

The subprime mortgage of America caused the global financial crisis. Most invest bankers and brokers were hurt deeply by the financial crisis. Due to the collapse of the financial system, the value of the investor¡¦s assets reduced rapidly. Those investors who invest in the mutual funds are exposed to the high risk. The mutual fund investors become the victims of the herding behavior. People invest in the hot investment market like Brazil, China, Russia etc.. The undue sales of the variable universal life (VUL) and the structure notes have destroyed the faith relationship between the investors and the financial consultants. However, the financial consultants did not show up the investment risk entirely in the process of sales. Therefore the investors neglected the risk which they could bear. For this reason, the risk of their investment behavior also exceeded the limit. Consequently, we discuss the change of the investors¡¦ investment behavior and risk preference of the mutual fund investors.

<p>South Korea experienced a financial crisis in 1997 after more than 30 years of fast eco-nomic growth. During the crisis its gross domestic product (GDP) decreased sharply and many enterprises went bankrupt. The stated-owned banks in South Korea suffered huge losses and investors lost confidence in investing in the South Korean financial market. One result of the crisis reveals the weakness of the South Korean economy- government intervention in the banking sector.</p><p>This paper provides the reason for the financial crisis in 1997 in the introduction sec-tion. The following section is a theoretical framework, in which we have presented two macroeconomic models: the Solow model-growth accounting formula and the Ricardo-Viner model. With empirical findings, we show how the South Korean government re-sponded after the crisis with three approaches to banking reform. We include the two macroeconomic models in the analysis of how the three approaches affected the eco-nomic growth in South Korea during the reform process in the analysis section. Finally, we conclude that the South Korean banking sector reform has provided a success and briefly discuss how China should implement the South Korean useful experiences into its ongoing process of banking sector reform.</p>

<p>This bachelor thesis in economics examines the Asian financial crisis, the impact on the countries in the region and how well they recovered financially. The countries that are taken into consideration are Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.  The variables used to explain the implications of the crisis are GDP, trade openness, unemployment and current account.</p><p>Descriptive statistics show that the most closed economy that was affected by a current account reversal was also the hardest hit in terms of GDP.  The statistics also show that all the countries under observation have recovered to their situation prior to the crisis in terms of GDP, but not in terms of the level of unemployment.</p><p>Two regressions that were performed showed the relation between trade openness and the effect of GDP after the crisis, and the relation of trade openness to growth after the crisis. The regressions show that the more closed an economy is the larger the effect of a crisis. At the same time these countries had the highest growth rates after the crisis and were also among the first to recover. Theoretical reasons for these results are given.</p>

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ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the associations between recent global crises in staple food prices and finance and the following aspects of life in two communities on the island of Roatàn, Islas de La Bahia (Bay Islands), Honduras: household livelihoods; food commoditization; dietary diversity; food security; and nutritional status. The aims of this study are: ) assess the geographic and economic source(s) of foods consumed by two different communities on Roatàn; b) discover how the most recent economic and food crises have affected foodways and nutrition on Roatàn; c) assess how these crises have affected economic growth of the tourism sector on Roatàn. The two study sites are the towns of West End and Punta Gorda, towns with different histories and different trajectories in the recent tourism boom on the island. West End is a small village located at the western edge of Roatàn and has experienced a steady growth in tourism since the 1980s. Tourism in Punta Gorda has grown noticeably since the cruise ships started making ports of call to the island in the early Twenty First Century. The theoretical perspective of this study is an amalgamation of bioculturalism and political ecology, as the strengths of these two approaches are complementary. In this case, the project is biocultural in that it investigates the linkages between global and local level political economic processes, cultural traits, and biological health indicators. The project is political ecological because it addresses the intersection of the political economic and the ecological by describing changing land use and subsistence patterns in the context of a shift in the local economy to tourism based wage labor. In terms of methodology, this project employs a mixed methods approach which triangulates qualitative and quantitative data collected through a variety of means. Participant observation, the detailed observation of and participation in social events, special occasions, work activities, and other events of daily life underpins the entire methodology. Other qualitative methods include informal interviews and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative methods include surveys to assess dietary diversity and food security and anthropometric measurements such as weight and height that serve as a baseline for calculating nutritional indices such as body mass index and body fat percentage. Overall, the sample is split about evenly in primary household livelihoods between formal tourism work, small scale enterprise, and the category of shipping, seafood, and office work. At the community level, West End is more heavily involved in tourism work and Punta Gorda is more heavily involved in shipping, seafood, and office work. Both communities have a strong component of small scale enterprise, including artisanal fishermen, water taxi operators, and vendors of food and souvenirs. Both communities are imbedded in a highly commoditized food system, with all households in the sample buying the majority of their food rather than growing or catching it. The two main effects of this circumstance are that dietary diversity and food security are associated with income level and that the current trend of rising food prices, which is associated with a trend of rising fuel prices, is making certain foods harder for some households to obtain. In general, the sample has a mode of medium dietary diversity and moderate food insecurity. Significant factors influencing dietary diversity are community, occupational group, income group, and how frequently a household does artisanal fishing. Significant factors in food security include occupational group and income group. For adult respondents, obesity is a pervasive problem and is evident in results for body mass index, body fat percentage, and waste to hip ratio, as well as in frequent discourse about diabetes and hypertension. Child measurement results show no problem with stunting or wasting and a lower prevalence of obesity than in adults. While the nutritional picture in these two communities is not as dire as it is in many Central American examples, there is room for improvement. Recommendations stemming from this project include: communities gardens to bolster access to a more diverse diet; a cooperative based on fishing of an invasive marine species in order to control its population an provide a sustainable livelihood for artisanal fishermen; and a tourism customer service course to make local people more competitive for a wider array of tourism jobs.

This dissertation explores the application of the techniques of mathematical finance to the achievement of investment targets and financial stability. It contains three self-contained but broadly related essays. Sharpe et al. proposed the idea of having an expected utility maximizer choose a probability distribution for future wealth as an input to her investment problem rather than a utility function. They developed the Distribution Builder as one way to elicit such a distribution. In a single-period model, they then showed how this desired distribution for terminal wealth can be used to infer the investor's risk preferences. In the first essay, we adapt their idea, namely that a desired distribution for future wealth is an alternative input attribute for investment decisions, to continuous time. In a variety of scenarios, we show how the investor's desired distribution, combined with her initial wealth and market-related input, can be used to determine the feasibility of her distribution, her implied risk preferences, and her optimal policies throughout her investment horizon. We then provide several examples. In the second essay, we consider an investor who must a priori liquidate a large position in a primary risky asset whose price is influenced by the investor's liquidation strategy. Liquidation must be complete by a terminal time T, and the investor can hedge the market risk involved with liquidation over time by investing in a liquid proxy asset that is correlated with the primary asset. We show that the optimal strategies for an investor with constant absolute risk aversion are deterministic and we find them explicitly using calculus of variations. We then analyze the strategies and determine the investor's indifference price. In the third essay, we use contingent claims analysis to study several aggregate distance-to-default measures of the S&P Financial Select Sector Index during the years leading up to and including the recent financial crisis of 2007-2009. We uncover mathematical errors in the literature concerning one of these measures, portfolio distance-to-default, and propose an alternative measure that we show has similar conceptual and in-sample econometric properties. We then compare the performance of the aggregate distance-to-default measures to other common risk indicators. / text