Surmounting the Individual: Establishing a Common Currency in Asia – A Case Study of East Asian Economies

In the Ministerial meeting of ASEAN held in 1998, the devastation caused by Asian financial crisis remained the point of contemplation. The participants enthusiastically discussed the need to establish common currency and exchange rate system in order to counter any financial crisis anticipated. The ever-growing financial crisis threatening every region in the world has compelled the economists to acknowledge the elevating need of financial cooperation in their respective territories. This is certainly meant to ensure economic stability at both economic and political level. The authors, in the course of this paper, have focused the need to materialize the ideal of promoting monetary integration in the major economies of South, South East, and North East Asia. Calculating Optimum Currency Area (OCA) Index, the authors in a way present costs and benefits associated with the adoption of this currency union. Demand and supply sides of each economy are tested as a pre requisite of OCA in order to provide a good rationale in favor of selection of regions. For this purpose, Structural VAR Analysis (SVAR) method was employed and innovation accounting is done through variance decomposition of forecast errors, impulse response function and correlation matrix. The theory of OCA has been tested by (i) calculating the OCA index estimated by simple OLS method and (ii) following Bayoumi and Eichengreen extrapolating the variability of exchange rate data. The common consensus drawn from the two approaches adopted implies that there is a good potential in the region excluding China to construct a currency union particularly amongst South and North East Asian economies. It is worth mentioning, however, that some of these will have to work harder to join and become an effective member of this currency merger.