To explain why Asian countries seem to have been hoarding international reserves, especially since the 1997 crisis, we consider various regional neighbourhood effects. One such effect is that of “catching up with the Joneses”. We revisit that effect by analysing several refinements of it. We also consider the fear of the kind of contagion that the crisis‐hit countries saw in 1997. Finally, we look at the possibility of a regional financial cycle, in which the conditions that led to the crisis might have been correlated across countries. We find that refining the Joneses effect to take account of trade links strengthens its power to explain the build‐up of reserves. We also observe that a country that finds itself more vulnerable than its regional neighbours would tend to accumulate more reserves. Finally, we find that a common regional factor related to current‐account balances spurs further reserve accumulation. Contrary to previous analyses, our results suggest that only a couple of Asian countries have been holding excessive reserves. Some were actually holding less reserves than would be optimal in the presence of neighbourhood effects.

中文翻译：

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reserves积国际储备：这是亚洲的一个邻居日子

为了解释为什么亚洲国家似乎一直ho积国际储备，特别是自1997年危机以来，我们考虑了各种区域邻里效应。这样的效果之一就是“赶上琼斯”。我们通过分析几种改进来重新评估这种效果。我们还考虑到了受危机打击的国家在1997年看到的那种蔓延的恐惧。最后，我们考察了区域金融周期的可能性，在这种周期中，导致危机的条件可能在各个国家之间是相关的。我们发现，改善琼斯效应以考虑贸易联系会增强其解释储备积累的能力。我们还观察到，一个发现自己比其区域邻国更脆弱的国家将倾向于积累更多的储备。最后，我们发现，与经常账户余额相关的共同区域性因素促使储备进一步积累。与之前的分析相反，我们的结果表明，只有几个亚洲国家拥有过多的外汇储备。有些实际持有的储备少于存在邻里效应时的最优储备。