Has Financial Integration of ASEAN and APEC Contributed to Economic Growth?

Abstract

As globalization prevails, financial integration has been ongoing. The movement of globalization has occurred from the 1980s and a lot of attention has been paid to occurred issues from of aspects. This study focuses on whether financial integration in ASEAN and APEC promotes economic growth or not. These areas have attempted to tackle integration and cooperation and to achieve growth. Also, a global financial crisis occurred in the 1990s, and the 2000s made policy makers and business persons aware of potential contagion. Globalization sometimes has caused a contagion of financial crises. On the other hand, cooperation promoted recovery from the damaged economy in some areas. So the pros and cons have been examined, however, a definite answer whether financial integration is correct or not remains unknown. Using available data, empirical analyses are conducted in this study to examine the relationship between financial integration and economic growth. The empirical results show that financial integration has contributed to economic growth in ASEAN, however, this result cannot be applied clearly to APEC. The variety of participating countries in APEC may have affected the result. Moreover, there are some problems to be solved for sound economic growth for these areas.