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on South East Asia |
| By: | Thandar Khine |
| Abstract: | Myanmar highly appreciates foreign direct investment (FDI) as a key solution reducing the development gap with leading ASEAN countries. Accordingly, it is welcomed by the government. Myanmar's Foreign Investment Law was enacted in 1988 soon after the adoption of a market-oriented economic system to boost the flow of FDI into the country. Foreign investors positively responded to these measures in the early years and FDI inflow into Myanmar gradually increased during the period from 1989 to 1996. However, after 1997, FDI inflow was dramatically reduced and markedly declined until 2004. In 2005, FDI inflow increased at an unprecedented rate and reached the highest level in the country's history. However, this growth was not sustainable in the subsequent years, as it declined again and turned stagnant at the previous level. In terms of source regions, ASEAN is a major investor in Myanmar, which investment is significantly exceeds the combined investment of other regions of the world. Among top ten countries, Thailand's investment alone is significantly more than combined total investments of the other nine countries. Next to Thailand in terms of investments in Myanmar are Singapore and Malaysia among ASEAN, at second and third places, respectively. The combined total FDI inflows into the power and oil and gas sector represent about 65 percent of the total investment. There are many opportunities for foreign investment in other sectors, which are not, yet exploited. ASEAN countries will certainly be source countries of Myanmar FDI in the future, and Myanmar should expand to other Asian countries like Japan, India, China, Korea, and Hong Kong where its FDI portfolio is concerned. To effectively attract FDI into the country, Myanmar needs to minimize the effect of policy while opening and encouraging other potential sectors of FDI to foreign investors in ASEAN and Asian countries. |
| Keywords: | Small and medium enterprises, Small and medium-scale enterprises, Financing, East Asian economic integration, Myanmar, ASEAN, Southeast Asia, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Foreign Investments |
| JEL: | G28 O23 |
| Date: | 2008–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper149&r=sea |
| By: | Mehrotra, Aaron (BOFIT); Kozluk , Tomasz (BOFIT) |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of Chinese monetary policy shocks on China’s major trading partners in East Asia by estimating structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models for six economies in the region. We find that a monetary expansion in Mainland China leads to an increase in real GDP (temporary) and the price level (permanent) in a number of economies in our sample, most notably in Hong Kong and the Philippines. The impact could result from intertemporal substitution present in a general equilibrium framework which allows for positive domestic impacts of foreign monetary expansions. Our results emphasize the growing importance of China for its neighboring economies and the significance of Chinese shocks for the design of monetary policy in Asian economies. |
| Keywords: | monetary policy shocks; Asian production chain; SVAR; East Asia; China |
| JEL: | E52 F42 |
| Date: | 2008–06–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:bofitp:2008_005&r=sea |
| By: | THORBECKE, Willem |
| Abstract: | East Asia is characterized by intricate production and distribution networks that allow fragmented production blocks to be allocated across countries based on comparative advantage. These networks have produced enormous efficiency gains. Exchange rate volatility, by increasing uncertainty, may reduce the locational benefits of cross-border fragmentation. This paper presents evidence that exchange rate volatility decreases the flow of electronic components within East Asia. Electronic components is by far the largest category of intermediate goods traded within these networks. These results imply that policy makers should consider how to maintain stable exchange rates in the region in order to provide a steady backdrop for East Asian production networks. |
| Date: | 2008–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:08016&r=sea |
| By: | Abhijit Sen Gupta (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Rela); Amitendu Palit (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Rela) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we evaluate the feasibility of a common Asian Currency Unit (ACU) involving countries of East and South Asia. We analyze the various properties of an ACU and calculate it's value using weighted averages of the values of Asian currencies. Looking at the movement of individual Asian currencies vis-'a-vis the ACU, we find that there have been severe misalignments among the Asian currencies during the past seven years. We discuss the possibility of the Rupee figuring in the ACU and identify the major economic, political and historical impediments in the way of faster acceptance of ACU in the region. We point out the various strategies that could be employed to facilitate faster adoption of ACU. These include creating certain institutional safeguards as well as strengthening the existing ones. Finally, we highlight some ways to promote the use and acceptability of the ACU and also emphasize the importance of conceiving a larger framework of participating countries, including India. |
| Keywords: | Asian Currency Unit, Regional integration, Monetary cooperation |
| JEL: | F36 F41 |
| Date: | 2008–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ind:icrier:208&r=sea |
| By: | Pender, John; Suyanto; Kerr, John; Kato, Edward |
| Abstract: | "This paper investigates the impacts of a social forestry program in Indonesia, Hutan Kamasyarakatan (HKm), based on analysis of a survey of 640 HKm and comparable non-HKm plots in the Sumberjaya watershed of southern Sumatra, and of the households operating those plots. The HKm program provides groups of farmers with secure-tenure permits to continue farming on state Protection Forest land and in exchange for protecting remaining natural forestland, planting multistrata agroforests, and using recommended soil and water conservation (SWC) measures on their coffee plantations. Using farmers' perceptions, econometric techniques, and propensity score matching, we investigated the impacts of the HKm program on perceived land tenure security, land purchase prices, farmers' investments in tree planting and SWC measures, and plot-level profits. A significant fraction of HKm group members are not aware of the program or fully aware of its requirements. Although farmers who are aware of the program perceive its strong effects on tenure security and land values, we found insignificant impacts on the actual purchase prices of plots. Nevertheless, our survey revealed that the HKm program has contributed to increased planting of timber and multipurpose trees. We did not find significant impacts on investments in SWC measures or on soil fertility management practices. HKm has had mixed impacts on profits, with timber trees reducing profitability because timber harvesting is not allowed and multipurpose nontimber trees contributing to increased profits. The policy implications of these findings are also discussed in the paper." from Author's Abstract |
| Keywords: | Rewards for environmental services, Land tenure contracts, Social forestry, Impact assessment, Land management, |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:769&r=sea |
| By: | Pradorn Sureephong (LIESP - Laboratoire d'Informatique pour l'Entreprise et les Systèmes de Production - Université Claude Bernard - Lyon I - Université Lumière - Lyon II - Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon, CAMT - College of Arts, Media and Technology - Chiang Mai University); Nopasit Chakpitak (CAMT - College of Arts, Media and Technology - Chiang Mai University); Yacine Ouzrout (LIESP - Laboratoire d'Informatique pour l'Entreprise et les Systèmes de Production - Université Claude Bernard - Lyon I - Université Lumière - Lyon II - Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon); Abdelaziz Bouras (LIESP - Laboratoire d'Informatique pour l'Entreprise et les Systèmes de Production - Université Claude Bernard - Lyon I - Université Lumière - Lyon II - Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon) |
| Abstract: | Knowledge-based economy forces companies in the nation to group together as a cluster in order to maintain their competitiveness in the world market. The cluster development relies on two key success factors which are knowledge sharing and collaboration between the actors in the cluster. Thus, our study tries to propose knowledge management system to support knowledge management activities within the cluster. To achieve the objectives of this study, ontology takes a very important role in knowledge management process in various ways; such as building reusable and faster knowledge-bases, better way for representing the knowledge explicitly. However, creating and representing ontology create difficulties to organization due to the ambiguity and unstructured of source of knowledge. Therefore, the objectives of this paper are to propose the methodology to create and represent ontology for the organization development by using knowledge engineering approach. The handicraft cluster in Thailand is used as a case study to illustrate our proposed methodology. |
| Keywords: | Ontology, Knowledge Management System, Industry Clusters |
| Date: | 2007–08–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:papers:hal-00284594_v1&r=sea |
| By: | Sharon L. Maccini; Dean Yang |
| Abstract: | How sensitive is long-run individual well-being to environmental conditions early in life? This paper examines the effect of weather conditions around the time of birth on the health, education, and socioeconomic outcomes of Indonesian adults born between 1953 and 1974. We link historical rainfall for each individual's birth-year and birth-location with current adult outcomes from the 2000 wave of the Indonesia Family Life Survey. Higher early-life rainfall has large positive effects on the adult outcomes of women, but not of men. Women with 20% higher rainfall (relative to normal local rainfall) in their year and location of birth are 3.8 percentage points less likely to self-report poor or very poor health, attain 0.57 centimeters greater height, complete 0.22 more grades of schooling, and live in households that score 0.12 standard deviations higher on an asset index. These patterns most plausibly reflect a positive impact of rainfall on agricultural output, leading to higher household incomes and food availability and better health for infant girls. We present suggestive evidence that eventual benefits for adult women's socioeconomic status are most strongly mediated by improved schooling attainment, which in turn improves socioeconomic status in adulthood. |
| JEL: | I1 I2 I3 O1 O15 Q5 |
| Date: | 2008–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14031&r=sea |
| By: | Karin Mayr; Giovanni Peri |
| Abstract: | Recent theoretical and empirical studies have emphasized the fact that the prospect of international migration increases the expected returns to skills in poor countries, linking the possibility of migrating (brain drain) with incentives to higher education (brain gain). If emigration is uncertain and some of the highly educated remain, such a channel may, at least in part, counterbalance the negative effects of brain drain. Moreover, recent empirical evidence seems to show that temporary migration is widespread among highly skilled migrants (such as Eastern Europeans in Western Europe and Asians in the U.S.). This paper develops a simple tractable overlapping generations model that provides an economic rationale for return migration and which predicts who will migrate and who will return among agents with heterogeneous abilities. We use parameter values from the literature and the data on return migration to simulate the model and quantify the effects of increased openness on human capital and wages of the sending countries. We find that, for plausible values of the parameters, the return migration channel is very important and combined with the incentive channel reverses the brain drain into significant brain gain for the sending country. |
| JEL: | F22 J61 O15 |
| Date: | 2008–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14039&r=sea |