A single currency for ASEAN-5 : an empirical study of economic convergence and symmetry / Zhi Lu Xu, Bert D. Ward, Christopher Gan -- Periodically collapsing bubbles in the Asian emerging stock markets / Ako Doffou -- Currency crises in Asia : a multivariate logit approach / Jan P.A.M. Jacobs, Gerard H. Kuper, Lestano -- A new approach for estimating relationships between stock market returns : evidence of financial integration in the Southeast Asian region / T.J. Brailsford, T.J. O'Neill, J. Penm -- Evidence of bubbles in the Malaysian stock market / Gary J. Rangel, Subramaniam S. Pillay -- Abnormal returns after large stock price changes : evidence from Asia-Pacific markets / Vu Thang Long Pham, Do Quoc Tho Nguyen, Thuy-Duong Tô -- Price limits in Asia-Pacific financial markets : the case of the Shanghai stock exchange / Bert Scholtens, Liu Yao -- China's securities markets : challenges, innovations, and the latest developments / Xinyi Yuan, Wei Fan, Qiang Liu -- Temporal causality of returns of index futures and stock markets : evidence from Malaysia / Wee Ching Pok -- Price behaviour surrounding block transactions in stock index futures markets : international evidence / Alex Frino, Jennifer Kruk, Andrew Lepone -- Introduction to Asia-Pacific financial markets : integration, innovation and challenges / Suk-Joong Kim, Michael D. McKenzie -- The determinants of capital structure : evidence from Vietnam / Nahum Biger, Nam V. Nguyen, Quyen X. Hoang -- Shareholders value creation and destruction : the stock prices effects of merger announcement in Japan / Ognjenka Zrilic, Yasuo Hoshino -- Takeovers and shareholder value creation on the stock exchange of Thailand / David E. Allen, Amporn Soongswang -- Herd behaviour of Chinese mutual funds / Jean Jinghan Chen, Xinrong Xiao, Peng Cheng -- Correlation dynamics between Asia-Pacific, EU and US stock returns / Stuart Hyde, Don Bredin, Nghia Nguyen -- Performance persistence of pension fund managers : evidence from Hong Kong mandatory provident funds / Patrick Kuok-Kun Chu -- Financial market implications of India's pension reform / Hélène K. Poirson -- On the safety and soundness of Chinese banks in the post-WTO era / Lei Xu, Chien-Ting Lin -- Market discipline by CD holders : evidence from Japan with a comparison to the US / Ayami Kobayashi -- What are the next steps for bond market development in Thailand? / Jonathan A. Batten, Pongsak Hoontrakul -- Conditional autocorrelation and stock market integration in the Asia-Pacific / Suk-Joong Kim, Michael D. McKenzie -- The impact of the opening up of the B-share markets on the integration of Chinese stock markets / Langnan Chen, Steven Li, Weibin Lin.

This volume of International Finance Review focuses on the Asia-Pacific financial markets. A total of 22 original papers, not published elsewhere, have been selected from a competitive field. These papers utilize a variety of methods, including theoretical, empirical and qualitative to highlight a range of issues across the region. Several papers offer combinations of these different categories and among the empirical papers, there are a wide variety of datasets analyzed. While China does play a significant part in the analysis of five of the papers in this volume (this is to be expected given its importance in the region), a host of other countries are also considered. This ensures the volume is truly international in its scope. These papers each serve to contribute to the knowledge on a particular issue related to the financial markets within this region and for this volume, three main issues have been identified: integration, innovation and challenges. Articles are contributed by experts in their fields. It is truly international in scope.