Skip to main content
This issue is devoted to an eclectic mix of topics. Nonetheless, all have the common property of relevance from the perspective of development policy issues currently facing the region. In the first paper the authors examine corporate governance. As we know, the agency problem involving a conflict of interest between shareholders and management does not exist in the region with the same potency as in the developed economies where disputes between major shareholders and management are far more common. However, several disturbing features relating to corporate governance came to light following the 1997 economic crisis that gave a new twist to the agency problem in the region. In many regional economies, much of the corporate sector long dominated by traditional family shareholdings became effectively insolvent in 1997.

It then transpired that in both the events leading up to the crisis and the post-crisis corporate restructurings that subsequently took place, the interests of minority shareholders, not to speak of the wider group of stakeholders in particular firms, had been largely ignored. It seemed that family concerns had gone public to use the general public merely as a cash cow for their companies. Little was done to protect minority shareholders from the lack of managerial competence and, indeed, of predilection to outright fraud that many of these companies had displayed over the years.

The Asia-Pacific Development Journal (APDJ) is published twice a year by the Macroeconomic Policy and Development Division of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

The primary objective of the APDJ is to provide a platform for the exchange of knowledge, experience, ideas, information and data on all aspects of economic and social development issues and concerns facing the region and to stimulate policy debate and assist in the formulation of policy.

The development experience in the Asian and Pacific region has stood out as an extraordinary example of what can be achieved when policymakers, experts, scholars and people at large harness their creativity, knowledge and foresight. The Asia-Pacific Development Journal has been a proud partner in this process, providing a scholarly means for bringing together research work by eminent social scientists and development practitioners from the region and beyond for use by a variety of stakeholders. Over the years, the Journal has emerged as a key United Nations publication in telling the Asian and Pacific development story in a concise, coherent and impartial manner to stimulate policy debate and assist in the formulation of policy in the region.

Contact
Macroeconomic Policy and Financing for Development Division +66 2 288-1234 [email protected]