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4 Grimes defines East Asian financial regionalism as ‘[East Asian states'] attempts to reduce currency volatility, to create frameworks to contain financial crises, and to develop local financial markets.’ Under the auspices of ASEAN Plus Three, East Asian financial regionalism is manifested through three major initiatives: the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) (2000) as a framework to contain financial crises, the Asian Bond Markets Initiative (ABMI) (2002) for the development of local financial markets, and the agreement to conduct in-depth research on the feasibility of the Asian Currency Unit (ACU) (2006) for the management of currency volatility. Grimes, William, Currency and Contest in East Asia: The Great Power Politics of Financial Regionalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009)Google Scholar .

5 In this article, East Asian states refer to the members of ASEAN Plus Three (China, Japan, and Korea), which have made considerable progress in regional economic cooperation.

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7 Ibid., pp. 222–3. According to Welch, Hypothesis 1 fares better as an explanation of foreign policy inertia than of foreign policy change. A major limitation of Hypothesis 2 is that its application works much better in the security domain than in the economic domain. As such, compared with Hypothesis 3, both hypotheses show rather limited empirical as well as theoretical coverage.

8 Ibid., p. 8.

9 Ibid., p. 41.

10 Ibid., p. 31.

11 Ibid., p. 47.

12 For the limitation of the bounded rationality approach to human action, see, for example, Chai, Sun-Ki, Choosing an Identity: A General Model of Preference and Belief Formation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), pp. 43–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Chai criticises the ambiguity of the bounded rationality approach for how ‘satisfying’ [Welch's ‘acceptable’] alternatives emerge in the first place.

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63 {http://www.aseansec.org/afp/115.htm}.

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89 Ministry of Finance, ‘Regional Financial Cooperation among ASEAN+3’ {http://www.mof.go.jp/english/international_policy/financial_cooperation_in_asia/regional_financial_cooperation/index.htm}.

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