Finance and Security in East Asia

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What drives the relationship between regional finance and security in East Asia?  Overall, the relationship may be regarded as mutually endogenous. Financial cooperation in the region, long promoted in principle, is constrained in practice by underlying security tensions. Yet, over time, tentative steps toward financial cooperation could also have the effect of moderating regional strains, as governments become more accustomed to working with each other and as interests become more densely intertwined. Some form of financial regionalism, entailing closer monetary and financial relations, can certainly be expected. However, in the absence of a fundamental shift in regional politics, tangible achievements will remain modest for a long time to come.

Benjamin J. Cohen is Louis G. Lancaster Professor of International Political Economy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has been a member of the Political Science Department since 1991. He was educated at Columbia University, earning a Ph.D. in Economics in 1963. He has worked as a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1962–64) and taught at Princeton University (1964–71) and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (1971–91). A specialist in the political economy of international money and finance, he serves on the editorial boards of several leading academic journals and is the author of twelve books, including most recently Global Monetary Governance (Routledge) and International Political Economy: An Intellectual History (Princeton University Press), both published in 2008. He has won numerous awards and in 2000 was named Distinguished Scholar of the year by the International Political Economy Section of the International Studies Association.