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on South East Asia |
| By: | Park, Yung Chul (Asian Development Bank Institute); Song, Chi-Young (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to reexamine the exchange rate policy of the Republic of Korea, and its role in promoting financial and monetary cooperation in East Asia in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. The Republic of Korea would not actively participate in any discussion of establishing a regional monetary and exchange rate arrangement as it is expected to maintain a weakly managed floating regime. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been fostering the yuan as an international currency, which will lay the groundwork for forming a yuan area among the PRC; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); Hong Kong, the PRC; and Taipei,China. Japan has shown less interest in assuming a greater role in East Asia’s economic integration due to deflation, a strong yen, slow growth, and political instability. Japan would not eschew free floating. These recent developments demand a new modality of monetary cooperation among the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the PRC. Otherwise, ASEAN+3 will lose its rationale for steering regional economic integration in East Asia. |
| Keywords: | exchange rate policy; republic of korea; financial monetary cooperation; east asia; global financial crisis; regional economic integration |
| JEL: | F30 F40 |
| Date: | 2011–10–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0314&r=sea |
| By: | C. Randall Henning (Peterson Institute for International Economics); Mohsin S. Khan (Peterson Institute for International Economics) |
| Abstract: | Currently, Asia’s influence in global financial governance is not consistent with its weight in the world economy. This paper examines the role of Asia in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Group of Twenty (G-20). It looks in particular at how the relationship between East Asian countries and the IMF has evolved since the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 and outlines how Asian regional arrangements for crisis financing and economic surveillance could constructively interact with the IMF in the future. It also considers ways to enhance the effectiveness of Asian countries in the G-20 process. |
| Keywords: | Asia, G-20, IMF, regional financial arrangements, global governance |
| JEL: | F02 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp11-16&r=sea |
| By: | Hsieh, Wen-jen (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | The collapse of exports that has attended the current global economic recession threatens the export-led economic growth of the four Asian dragons. To better understand the economic performances and future prospects of the four dragons, this paper first examines the economic structural changes that have taken place in Hong Kong, China; the Republic of Korea; Singapore; and Taipei,China, as well as the gradual shifting of the sources of economic growth away from the manufacturing sector and toward the service sector. Following this, a panel data set for the four dragons for the period 1995–2008 is constructed and a fixed-effects model applied to the data. |
| Keywords: | global economic recession; asian dragons; new service development; industrial structure |
| JEL: | E60 F01 O12 |
| Date: | 2011–10–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0315&r=sea |
| By: | Farré, Lídia (IAE Barcelona (CSIC)); Fasani, Francesco (IAE Barcelona (CSIC)) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of television on internal migration in Indonesia. We exploit the differential introduction of private television throughout the country and the variation in signal reception due to topography to estimate the causal effect of media exposure. Our estimates reveal important long and short run effects. An increase of one standard deviation in the number of private TV channels received in the area of residence reduces future inter-provincial migration by 1.7-2.7 percentage points, and all migration (inter and intra-provincial) by 4-7.4 percentage points. Short run effects are slightly smaller, but still sizeable and statistically significant. We also show that respondents less exposed to private TV are more likely to consider themselves among the poorest groups of the society. As we discuss in a stylized model of migration choice under imperfect information, these findings are consistent with Indonesia citizens over-estimating the net gains from internal migration. |
| Keywords: | information, migration decisions, television |
| JEL: | J61 L82 O15 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6012&r=sea |
| By: | Gonzalo Hernandez (University of Massachusetts Amherst); Arslan Ramzi (University of Massachusetts Amherst) |
| Abstract: | Many developing countries have attempted to pursue the East Asian growth model in recent decades. This model is widely perceived to have been based on export-led growth. Given that developed countries are likely to grow at a slower rate and be less willing to run trade deficits in the post financial crisis world, can this growth model be sustained? Using panel data for Asian countries, this paper contributes to addressing this question by distinguishing between different kinds of export- and tradable-led growth in order to more precisely identify the nature of growth in the pre-crisis decades. We find in particular that, among our variables of interest, the proportion of a country?s manufactured exports that is destined for industrialized countries is the one most robustly associated with output growth. The results have implications for continued post-crisis growth in Asian developing countries. JEL Categories: F43, O11, O53 |
| Keywords: | Export-led growth, tradable-led growth, global imbalances, industrialization, capital accumulation. |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ums:papers:2011-29&r=sea |
| By: | Giles, John; Wang, Dewen; Cai, Wei |
| Abstract: | This paper highlights the employment patterns of China's over-45 population and, for perspective, places them in the context of work and retirement patterns in Indonesia, Korea, the United States, and the United Kingdom. As is common in many developing countries, China can be characterized as having two retirement systems: a formal system, under which urban employees receive generous pensions and face mandatory retirement by age 60, and an informal system, under which rural residents and individuals in the informal sector rely on family support in old age and have much longer working lives. Gender differences in age of exit from work are shown to be much greater in urban China than in rural areas, and also greater than observed in Korea and Indonesia. Descriptive evidence is presented suggesting that pension eligible workers are far more likely to cease productive activity at a relatively young age. A strong relationship between health status and labor supply in rural areas is observed, indicating the potential role that improvements in access to health care may play in extending working lives and also providing some basis for a common perception that older rural residents tend to work as long as they are physically capable. The paper concludes with a discussion of measures that may facilitate longer working lives as China's population ages. |
| Keywords: | Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Population Policies,Pensions&Retirement Systems,Work&Working Conditions |
| Date: | 2011–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5853&r=sea |
| By: | Thomas Barré (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I, ERUDITE - Equipe de Recherche sur l'Utilisation des Données Individuelles Temporelles en Economie - Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche - Université Paris XII Val de Marne : EA437 - Université Paris-Est) |
| Abstract: | Uncertainty is a crucial issue for producers who must make input decisions without knowing prices and without perfect knowledge of realized output. In this context, price expectations strongly determine the production choices and market prices that result from market-clearing conditions. This study analyzed the role that price expectations play in price dynamics, developing a theoretical model of trade in varieties following Armington (1969) and augmented with yield and price uncertainty to highlight several main determinants of domestic producer prices, including exchange rates, proximity to world markets, input prices, natural disasters, and producers' expectations. An econometric estimation of the rice sector, using a panel of 13 developing Asian countries during 1965-2003, confirmed that expectations count, with a 1% increase in the expected price resulting in a 1.18% decrease in the market price. A simulation exercise based on these empirical results demonstrated that forecasting errors are large. Specifically, Asian rice farmers have a 50% chance of making prediction errors of 10% or more on the final market price. This high error rate suggests the need for developing ways of sharing information, such as radio programs dedicated to agricultural producers or the introduction of futures markets, to stabilize agricultural incomes. |
| Keywords: | Rice ; Asia ; price dynamics ; price expectations ; |
| Date: | 2011–10–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-00630711&r=sea |
| By: | Ye Chen (School of Economics, Singapore Management Unversity); Jun Yu (School of Economics, Singapore Management Unversity) |
| Abstract: | Maximum likelihood estimation of the persistence parameter in the discrete time unit root model is known for suffering from a downward bias. The bias is more pronounced in the continuous time unit root model. Recently Chambers and Kyriacou (2010) introduced a new jackknife method to remove the fi rst order bias in the estimator of the persistence parameter in a discrete time unit root model. This paper proposes an improved jackknife estimator of the persistence parameter that works for both the discrete time unit root model and the continuous time unit root model. The proposed jackknife estimator is optimal in the sense that it minimizes the variance. Simulations highlight the performance of the proposed method in both contexts. They show that our optimal jackknife reduces the variance of the jackknife method of Chambers and Kyriacou by at least 10% in both cases. |
| Keywords: | Bias reduction, Variance reduction, Vasicek model, Long-span Asymptotics, Autoregression |
| JEL: | C11 C15 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:siu:wpaper:12-2011&r=sea |
| By: | Deepankar Basu (University of Massachusetts Amherst) |
| Abstract: | Using cross country regressions, this paper constructs a novel distance-to-frontier metric for tracking broad socio-onomic inequality (including access of the poor to health infrastructure) over time for individual countries. Given the unavailability of reliable and consistent direct measures of inequality for most poor countries, especially related to non-income aspects of living standards, the metric developed in this paper can be used as an alternative indirect measure that is intuitive and easy to compute. To highlight its potential use, the metric is used to rank countries in terms of improvements in socio-economic inequality for the period since 1990. Notable examples of poor performance are displayed by China, Thailand, Kenya and India. JEL Categories: I14, O57, I32. |
| Keywords: | life expectancy at birth, Preston regression, socio-economic inequality |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ums:papers:2011-27&r=sea |