Introduction to EASE 17

This volume is a collection of papers that were presented at the 17 annual East Asian Seminar in Economics (EASE) that was held at the Kohala Coast, Hawaii, June 22-24, 2006; the NBER was the local organizer. We thank all our sponsors – the NBER, All Nippon Airways, the University of Tokyo’s Center for Advanced Research in Finance, and especially the Center for Global Partnership – for making EASE 17 possible. The conference department of the NBER led by Carl Beck, and the publication department led by Helena Fitz-Patrick, as usual, made the organization and publication process run smoothly. Brett Maranjian deserves special praise for making the conference run flawlessly. In the revision process we received very helpful and thoughtful comments from two anonymous reviewers of the original manuscript. Both the editors and the authors have greatly benefited from their detailed comments on each chapter. We are extremely grateful to the reviewers from both the NBER and the University of Chicago press