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on South East Asia |
| By: | Sanjaya Lall and Manuel Albaladejo (QEH) |
| Abstract: | There is growing concern in Southeast and East Asia about the competitive threat posed by China’s burgeoning exports, exacerbated by its accession to the WTO. The threat is not confined to labour-intensive products but spans the whole technological and skill range. At the same time, China is rapidly raising its imports from the region, and it is not clear whether its burgeoning exports will damage its neighbours. We examine the dimensions of China’s competitive threat in the 1990s, benchmarking competitive performance by technology and market, and finds that market share losses are so far mainly in low technology products, with Japan being the most vulnerable market. We analyse market share changes and highlight product groups that are directly or indirectly exposed to a competitive threat. We examine intra-regional trade and find that China and its neighbours are raising high technology exports in tandem: the nature of the international production systems involved lead to complementarity rather than confrontation. China is thus acting as an engine of export growth for its neighbours in terms of direct trade. However, this will change as China moves up the value chain and takes on the activities that have driven East Asian export growth |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qeh:qehwps:qehwps110&r=sea |
| By: | Sanjaya Lall (QEH) |
| Abstract: | There is growing concern in Southeast and East Asia about the competitive threat posed by China’s burgeoning exports, exacerbated by its accession to the WTO. The threat is not confined to labour-intensive products but spans the whole technological and skill range. At the same time, China is rapidly raising its imports from the region, and it is not clear whether its burgeoning exports will damage its neighbours. We examine the dimensions of China’s competitive threat in the 1990s, benchmarking competitive performance by technology and market, and finds that market share losses are so far mainly in low technology products, with Japan being the most vulnerable market. We analyse market share changes and highlight product groups that are directly or indirectly exposed to a competitive threat. We examine intra-regional trade and find that China and its neighbours are raising high technology exports in tandem: the nature of the international production systems involved lead to complementarity rather than confrontation. China is thus acting as an engine of export growth for its neighbours in terms of direct trade. However, this will change as China moves up the value chain and takes on the activities that have driven East Asian export growth |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qeh:qehwps:qehwps111&r=sea |
| By: | Sanjaya Lall (QEH) and John Weiss |
| Abstract: | This paper explores China's competitive threat to Latin America in trade in manufactures. The direct threat in exports to third country markets appears small: LAC's trade structure is largely complementary to that of China. In bilateral trade, several LAC countries are increasing primary and resource-based exports to China. However, the pattern of trade, with LAC specializing increasingly in resource-based products and China in manufactures, seems worrying. Given cumulative capability building, China's success in increasingly technology-based products with strong learning externalities can place it on a higher growth path than specialisation in 'simpler' goods, as in LAC. China may thus affect LAC's technological upgrading in exports and industrial production. The issue is not so much current competition as the 'spaces' open for LAC in the emerging technology-based world. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qeh:qehwps:qehwps120&r=sea |
| By: | Jacinto F. Fabiosa (Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD); Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI)) |
| Abstract: | With sustained income growth and fast urbanization, Indonesia will see a major shift in the growth of grain consumption from rice to wheat products. New demand estimates from consumption survey data give a relatively high income elasticity of demand for wheat-based products, in the range of 0.44 to 0.84, with 26% to 34% of this response coming from the impact of income on the probability of consumption for non-consuming households and the remaining impact coming from the response on the level of consumption for households currently consuming wheat products. Urban location of households also contributes an increase of 0.11% to 0.13% to consumption. In contrast, elasticities in rice show a negative impact of income and urbanization on the probability of consumption and a positive but small impact on the unconditional mean. A partial liberalization scenario shows the domestic wheat flour price declining by 13.66%, inducing consumption to increase by 7.06%, which translates into 7.04% growth in imports. This exerts an upward pressure on the world price, increasing it by 0.23%. A faster income growth scenario shows higher consumption (2.60%), imports (2.59%), and prices (0.09%). Countries with a proximity advantage such as Australia, China, and India will benefit from the growth in this market. But, with dependable supply, product quality assurance, and credit availability, North American suppliers may still remain in this market. |
| Keywords: | double-hurdle demand, trade, Westernization of diet. |
| Date: | 2006–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ias:fpaper:06-wp422&r=sea |
| By: | Maria Jaschok (QEH) |
| Abstract: | The article, based on reflections from on-going ethnographic research in central China's Muslim and Catholic female communities, links indigenous notions of 'modernity' with religious identity and changing gender politics. Maria Jaschok argues that a growing de-centralization of the Chinese state apparatus and the concomitant emergence of civil space, however tentative or circumscribed, contribute to a society in which sources and processes of 'liberation', of the nation and of its women, are no longer axiomatic. Moreover, political tensions may bring in their wake volatility and uncertainty but, so Jaschok maintains, these also engender opportunities for aspirations, motivations, practises, and social engagement which are religiously infused! A modern, progressive, believing Chinese female citizen, assertive of her identity - it appears this may no longer be quite the oxymoron it once was when Maoist developmentalist prescriptions monopolised China's political culture. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qeh:qehwps:qehwps124&r=sea |
| By: | Ruoen Ren; Haitao Zheng |
| Abstract: | Based on our research work of 1998, we discuss Chinese manufacturing performance from multilateral perspective in 1980-2004 through performing the comparison of labour productivity between China and its trade partners so as to better understand the problems of RMB exchange rate. We talk about Chinese manufacturing competitiveness through the multilateral comparison of PPPs, relative price levels, labor productivity and ULCs, with the PPPs being standardized according to the base year 1997. All of the results are compared with those in the year 1987. The following findings are presented: in Chinese manufacturing, the various PPPs in the base year 1997 are approximately 3.7 yuan/international $. After the middle 1980s, the relative price turns the lowest in all the five investigation countries. Furthermore, it is still trending downward. ULC is declining albeit the fluctuations. In the 1980s, there is no "catch-up" rapid growth in labor productivity. However, after 1992, it has shown a distinct "catch-up", though with the low level. |
| Keywords: | Multilateral comparison, Manufacturing, International competitiveness |
| JEL: | O47 O57 F14 |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d06-170&r=sea |
| By: | Sanjaya Lall, Manuel Albaladejo and Jinkang Zhang (QEH) |
| Abstract: | 'Fragmentation', the relocation of processes or functions across countries in response to cost and other differences, has important implications for development. We discuss the drivers of fragmentation and map it for electronics and automotives in East Asia and Latin America. For technical reasons, electronics is fragmenting faster worldwide than autos. Electronics networks are more advanced, widespread and integrated in EA than LAC, and are largely responsible for EA's rapid export growth. The auto network is more advanced in LAC but is slower growing and is not integrated into a regional system. Apart from Mexico, LAC lacks an electronics network, partly accounting for the region's weak export performance. We offer insights into the following: Why do industries fragment differently? How can fragmentation be measured? Why does fragmentation in developing countries concentrate on EA and LAC? Why has fragmentation evolved differently in these two regions? Can other developing regions attract and benefit from fragmentation? |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qeh:qehwps:qehwps115&r=sea |
| By: | Andrea Cipollini (University of Essex) |
| Keywords: | Financial Contagion, Dynamic Factor Model, Stochastic Simulation |
| JEL: | C32 C51 F34 |
| Date: | 2006–07–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sce:scecfa:477&r=sea |
| By: | S M Ali Abbas (Hertford College) |
| Abstract: | The paper evaluates in depth, the exchange control measures imposed by Malaysia in September-1998. Controls are evaluated using three alternative benchmarks—Malaysia vs. itself (pre-controls), vs. ex-ante forecasts of Malaysia for the year-1999, and Malaysia vs. the other affected East Asian economies. The comparisons suggest that controls were effective in turning some key variables around, especially the stock market index, and also enabled Malaysia to incur fewer social costs vis-à-vis the other crisis-economies. Finally, a GARCH measure of Malaysia’s interest-rate and stock-market volatility is obtained and the impact of controls on volatility studied. Evidence was found of volatility responding differentially to the Russian crisis (before controls) and the Brazilian crisis (after controls), indicating that controls helped insulate Malaysia from developments in global financial markets. Overall the paper confirms the necessity of LDCs retaining the capital controls option in the absence of material efforts to reform the international financial architecture and the inadequacy of conventional policy tools to effectively deal with present-day capital flows. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qeh:qehwps:qehwps113&r=sea |
| By: | Horst Siebert |
| Abstract: | This paper answers the question which developing countries have gained and which have lost in the international division of labor during the last thirty years. The indicators used are GDP per capita in constant purchasing power parity and relative distance to the United States. Nearly all developing countries have improved in absolute terms over the last thirty years; many, among them China and India with large populations, have also reduced their relative distance to the United States. The paper classifies developing countries and discusses impediments to economic development and core elements of a growth strategy. |
| Keywords: | Economic development, growth, GDP per capita, stages of development, classification of developing countries, newly industrializing countries, core elements of a growth strategy, growth and equity, impediments to growth |
| JEL: | F O O40 N |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kie:kieliw:1280&r=sea |
| By: | Kaleen Love (QEH) |
| Abstract: | The central aim of this research has been to examine a particular development intervention by exposing its underlying paradigms and the discourses this generated. It was hypothesized that there is often a disjuncture between the changes explicitly pursued by such an intervention and those that result, which can then be linked to the paradoxical relationship between these paradigms and discourses. In other words, the incongruence of development aims and project actualities arises from the tensions between competing agendas and understandings. Therefore by exposing the contradictions in these underlying paradigms we gain insight into the politics of change. The programme studied was the UN Population Fund project in West Java, Indonesia, examining its layers through multi-sited research based in the centre (Jakarta), provincial government (Bandung) and two villages in the province. A Foucauldian framework, emphasizing local politics as a site of both physical and semiotic struggle and integrated within the analytical framework of a hermeneutical circle, was employed. In studying these gender-targeted programmes, conclusions were drawn on the nature of institutional discourse creation, bureaucratic ignorance, power in its many facets, and the construction and contestation of gender roles. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qeh:qehwps:qehwps114&r=sea |
| By: | Barbara Harriss-White (QEH) |
| Abstract: | When the output of a product that has been the basis of subsistence and social reproduction - as rice has been in Asia - expands, the marketed surplus rises disproportionately to the growth rate of production. Post harvest activities that were part and parcel of the reproductive activity of household labour (in the hands and under the feet of women - even if under the control of men) then also become commercialised. Firms expand in number and labour markets sprout up as firms become differentiated in size, scale and activity. Food security comes to depend not only on the market but also on the social and political structures in which markets are embedded. One of these social structures is gender. Two aspects of this gendered process are explored in this essay. The first is 'productive deprivation' which was argued by Ester Boserup to be the most notable impact of development on women. Using field evidence comparatively from four regions of South Asia from the 1970s to the present, the impact of the waves of technological change accompanying concentration and differentiation in rice markets is shown to be strongly net labour displacing and strongly biased against female labour. Nevertheless productive deprivation is class specific and masculinisation still co-exists with a high general level of female economic participation. To start to explain why productive deprivation is class specific the essay offers a development of Ursula Huws' theory of commodification and its impact on women in advanced capitalist conditions - elaborating it for conditions of mass poverty. Poverty is shown to limit the relevance of this gendered theory. Poverty is also an important reason for the persistence of petty commodity production and trade and petty service provision. Under petty production women are either self employed or unwaged family workers for men who are themselves not fully independent but frequently dependent on money advances from commercial capital. Evidence from West Bengal in the 1990s - where the growth of rice production has eased up - shows by contrast that the process of commodification has not eased up at all. Products, by-products, intermediate and investment goods, waste, public goods, state regulative resources and labour are all relentlessly commodified. The process creates livelihoods mainly for young, low caste men. Low caste women dominate itinerant retailing, directly dependent on money advances from male wholesalers. Women are being displaced from the rice mill labour forces in which economies of scale are pitched against unwaged work in petty production. The subordinated status and double work burden of women in petty production is well known, as is their economic dependence and social insecurity. (rice - masculinisation - commodification - comparative regional analysis - comparative institutional analysis). |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qeh:qehwps:qehwps128&r=sea |
| By: | Tipparat Pongthanapanich (Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Faculty of Economics, Kasetsart University) |
| Abstract: | “If Thai shrimp farming were taxed, how much should it be?” is the key re-search question of this paper. The dynamic-constraint optimization model in-corporating accumulated nutrient load from farm discharges is applied in the analysis. The model implies some tax has to be imposed on stock externality that is equal to increasing shadow cost of nutrient stock before damage occurs. However, the simulation results show very small shadow costs at the beginning of the paths and indicate that nutrient load in Andaman has a negligible effect on the sea but significant on the Gulf of Thailand. A socially efficient level of production for Thailand would be around 70-80% of private optimal produc-tion. The tax regime ensures a higher net gain from trade than at private opti-mum but it is ambiguous in term of net social welfare. |
| Keywords: | Green tax, stock externality, shrimp farming, Gulf of Thailand, Andaman Sea |
| Date: | 2005–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sdk:wpaper:64&r=sea |