Financial troubles such as recessions and crises are frequently spoken about in the Western world. Their causes, courses, and outcomes are always carefully studied as the scholars and experts are still arguing about the reasons why some of the most powerful economies of the world tend to fall into crises from time to time notwithstanding all the measures taken to avoid it. In the article called “The Tenth Anniversary of the Asian Financial Crisis: A Retrospective on East Asian Economic Performance” the author Edsel Beja discusses the countries of Asia that underwent financial crisis in 1997. Beja explores the impacts the crisis had on these countries and the outcomes that occurred years after the end of the crisis.
Among the victims of financial instability in Asia there are such states as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and South Korea. The author follows the rapid development that characterized all of these countries as fast growing economies during the beginning of 1990s, and then explores how the crisis affected them. Beja reveals that ten years after the crisis Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, and Indonesia still suffered serious consequences. In 2007 each of these countries had to recoup a social cost worth tens of billions of dollars. The author states that these Asian economies had not recovered over the ten years because their economic expansion had rather low dynamic in the post-crisis period. To compensate for the opportunities the economies lost during the financial crisis they had to focus on improving their economic expansion and re-gain the revenues.
The author states that to be able to overcome the consequences of the crisis successfully the affected states’ governments need to be ready to take decisive and bold measures. I agree that when a country undergoes such serious crisis and loses all of the advantages it had before, all available resources should be used to defeat the negative impacts, re-gain the lost opportunities, and return to the previous pace of development as soon as possible. The fact that the author presents tables reflecting foregone output, opportunity cost and accumulated cost data is extremely useful as it helps the readers to visualize the comparative consequences for each of the affected economies.
Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand each had their own way of dealing with, the example of South Korea shows the influence of economic expansion after 2005 created for the country’s economy and its recovery after the crisis. Even though all of the studied countries lost a lot of costs and their GDP reduced significantly compared to the middle of 1990s, the fact that ten years later the impact was still evident demonstrates that the economic performance of Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, and Thailand has not been strong enough to cover the losses of the crisis. I agree that when a county recovers from a financial turmoil the best way to improve its performance is to look for more opportunities for economical development in the international markets and abroad. In my opinion, the author’s report could have been even more effective if some examples of recovery measures of other countries dealing with other crises were demonstrated.
In conclusion, Beja provides a solid research of the financial challenges of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea after the 1997 financial crisis in Asia. The author uses tables and figures explaining the calculations and conclusions to the readers.