Asia-Pacific Perceptions of the Financial Crisis: Lessons and Affirmations‪.‬

Introduction The fact that the world over recent decades has seen a reduction in transaction costs and an increase in flows of goods, services, people and capital, is well established. (1) There is much less agreement, however, about the extent to which deeper economic integration, including increased gains from trade and investment, has brought change to institutional and value systems. At the present time this issue seems especially significant, as a region that had only a few years ago been celebrating its economic and social triumphs now confronts a widespread terrorist movement that invokes aspirations formulated some fourteen centuries ago.