Executive Summary :
The chief objective of our paper is to highlight basic features of the IT policies adopted by Indonesia and Thailand, and to evaluate the commitment of the monetary authorities and the overall performances of the IT regime. The results demonstrate that the IT regime in these two economies has had some success, but not during the immediate aftermath of the Lehman Brothers' collapse in the last quarter of 2008. Furthermore, the implementations of the IT policy in these two Southeast Asian economies have largely been "flexible" during the stable period, seeking the balance between narrowing output gap, managing exchange rate volatility, and anchoring inflationary pressure. However during the turbulent period, there had been a heightened focus in anchoring inflationary expectation. Read more

Executive Summary :
This study investigates the requirement for the exchange rate to be a shock absorber in Indonesia and Thailand from 1986 to 2007. In general, we find that the economic shocks have predominantly been asymmetric relative to the US and the Japanese economies. Yet, the weights attached to the US dollar remain respectably high in the exchange rate management of the rupiah and the baht, in particular for the latter currency, during the post-1997 crisis. Hence, relinquishing the role of the exchange rate as a shock absorber has been costly during both the pre-and the post-1997 crisis periods for these Southeast Asian countries. Furthermore, it is arguably more costly for Thailand during the post-1997, and for Indonesia during the pre-1997 crisis. Read more