As the global economic crisis intensified in March 2009, the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) organized a workshop on “Regional Responses to the Economic Crisis” hosted by the Japan Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation in Osaka, Japan. The meeting concluded that the Asia-Pacific faced historic challenges that call for unprecedented policy responses, cooperation and analysis.

To address these challenges, the PECC created a Taskforce on the Global Economic Crisis to “assess the region's progress in fighting recession, rebalancing economic structures, and managing sustained recoveries … [and to] anticipate the critical policy changes that will be required in the Asia Pacific to move from crisis management to stable growth.” Recognizing that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and other institutions were already contributing timely information on global developments, the PECC Standing Committee concluded that value could be added by providing independent analysis of policy options with particular emphasis on regional responses in the Asia-Pacific, where several key economies involved in the crisis are located. I was asked to chair the Taskforce.

Over the next few weeks we assembled a team of seven experts — an international group of leading researchers — and developed an ambitious work programme to produce results in less than six months, given the urgency of the crisis. We invited several other distinguished experts to serve as a “Panel of Advisers” (listed below). We discussed preliminary findings at a conference on “The Global Economic Crisis: Macroeconomic Issues”, hosted by the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo on 28–29 July 2009 and an advanced draft at a conference on the “Economic Crisis and Recovery: Enhancing Resilience, Structural Reform, and Freer Trade in the Asia-Pacific Region”, hosted by the Singapore National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Institute of Policy Studies in Singapore on 9–10 October 2009.