Governance, Institutional Quality and the Euro Area Crisis: What Lessons to East Asian Integration?

Abstract

We find that institutional quality of an individual country was highly and significantly correlated with its economic performance in the euro area. We argue that governance reforms proposed at present do not suffice to resolving the fundamental problems of the EMU governance system unless disparities of institutional quality in member states are dissolved. Regarding regional integration, East Asia is far behind the Eurozone not only in institutional elements of the governance system but also in institutional quality at the level of individual nations.