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on South East Asia |
| By: | Sharma, Deepak (University of Technology, Sydney); Sandhu, Suwin (Clean Energy Regulator); Misra, Suchi |
| Abstract: | We examine various macroeconomic impacts of improving energy efficiency in the People’s Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand from 2010 to 2050. Energy efficiency policies would have a positive impact on private consumption, government expenditures, and investment and would lead to a significant increase in trade within Asia while reducing trade outside. Adopting them would shift employment from energy and mining to manufacturing and services. There will be a significant decrease in energy intensity in all countries under the high growth scenario which implies that sustained growth depends on efficient energy use. Without measures to improve efficiency, emissions would increase significantly in most countries. In the People’s Republic of China, policies should emphasize reducing primary energy demand and emissions while minimizing the negative impacts on the economy. For India and Indonesia, policies should emphasize reducing primary energy demand and emissions while promoting economic growth. In Japan and Thailand, improvements in energy productivity could promote economic growth significantly and should be the policy focus. Best practice technologies in the Republic of Korea could significantly reduce primary energy requirements and emissions. They would also be most beneficial for Malaysia. |
| Keywords: | energy efficiency; energy demand; economic growth; Asia |
| JEL: | Q40 Q43 |
| Date: | 2014–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbewp:0406&r=sea |
| By: | Thuzar, Moe (Asian Development Bank Institute); Mishra, Rahul (Asian Development Bank Institute); Hutchinson, Francis (Asian Development Bank Institute); Than, Tin Maung Maung (Asian Development Bank Institute); Chalermpalanupap, Termsak (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | With closer regional integration there is increasing interest within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and on the part of ASEAN's dialogue partners in the potential gains of closer connections between Southeast Asia and South Asia. The strategic positions of India, Myanmar, and Thailand provide the basis and scope for implementing multi-modal connectivity projects, for building upon and improving existing infrastructure and processes for cross-border connectivity in trade. With outward-looking policies in the various subregions that seek to link their economies closer than ever, the ASEAN and South Asian countries are presented with a wide array of options at the bilateral, subregional, and regional levels that can be pursued in partnership under the different frameworks for cooperation. The role of regional entities such as the Asian Development Bank is also important to consider. This paper assesses the political economy and other implications of cross-border connectivity between South and Southeast Asia, and suggests practicable options for moving forward. |
| Keywords: | south asia and southeast asia; political economy; institutions; implementation challenges |
| JEL: | F55 H77 H87 O19 P48 R11 |
| Date: | 2014–10–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0501&r=sea |
| By: | Rosy Wediawaty (Directorate of State Finance and Monetary Analysis (BAPPENAS)) |
| Abstract: | Shocks, such as economic crisis, that occur in the critical periods of children development are believed to have lasting effects. Using data from Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS), this study investigates the timing issue and whether Asian Financial 1997/1998 crisis has impacts on child health and cognitive development in Indonesia. By running pooled cross-section model, this study finds that generally crisis has not had negative impacts on child health and cognitive development for those who were poor. Yet, in urban areas, crisis struck harder and negatively affected the cognitive score of specific age groups. This study also finds that the critical periods of children development might be in the first two years of early life. Expenditure levels and mothers’ education are strong predictors for child health and cognitive development. |
| Keywords: | Crisis, Child Health, Cognitive Development, Indonesia |
| JEL: | I15 O15 O53 |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unp:wpaper:201413&r=sea |
| By: | World Bank; Indonesia National Institute of Research and Development |
| Keywords: | Health Monitoring and Evaluation Health, Nutrition and Population - Adolescent Health Health Systems Development and Reform Disease Control and Prevention Health, Nutrition and Population - Population Policies |
| Date: | 2014–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wboper:20404&r=sea |
| By: | Raphael A Auer (Swiss National Bank); Aaron Mehrotra (Bank for International Settlements) |
| Abstract: | Some observers argue that increased real integration has led to greater co-movement of prices internationally. We examine the evidence for cross-border price spillovers among economies participating in the pan-Asian cross-border production networks. Starting with country-level data, we find that both producer price and consumer price inflation rates move more closely together between those Asian economies that trade more with one another, ie that share a higher degree of trade intensity. Next, using a novel data set based on the World Input-Output Database (WIOD), we examine the importance of the supply chain for cross-border price spillovers at the sectoral level. We document the increasing importance of imported intermediate inputs for economies in the Asia-Pacific region and examine the impact on domestic producer prices of changes in costs of imported intermediate inputs. Our results suggest that real integration through the supply chain matters for domestic price dynamics in the Asia-Pacific region. |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:szg:worpap:1405&r=sea |
| By: | John Jerrim (Department of Quantitative Social Science, Institute of Education) |
| Abstract: | A small group of high-performing East Asian economies dominate the top of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. This has caught the attention of Western policymakers, who want to know why East Asian children obtain such high PISA scores, and what can be done to replicate their success. In this paper I investigate whether children of East Asian descent, who were born and raised in a Western country (Australia), also score highly on the PISA test. I then explore whether their superior performance (relative to children of Australian heritage) can be explained by reasons often given for East Asian students’ extraordinary educational achievements. My results suggest that second-generation East Asian immigrants outperform their native Australian peers in mathematics by more than 100 PISA test points – the equivalent of two and a half years of schooling. Moreover, the magnitude of this achievement gap has increased substantially over the last ten years. Yet there is no ‘silver bullet’ that can explain why East Asian children excel academically. Rather a combination of factors, each making their own independent contribution, seem to be at play. Western policymakers should therefore appreciate that it may only be possible to catch the leading East Asian economies in the PISA rankings with widespread cultural change. |
| Keywords: | PISA, East Asia, second-generation immigrant |
| JEL: | I20 |
| Date: | 2014–10–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qss:dqsswp:1416&r=sea |
| By: | World Bank |
| Keywords: | Finance and Financial Sector Development - Microfinance Finance and Financial Sector Development - Debt Markets Finance and Financial Sector Development - Mutual Funds Private Sector Development - Emerging Markets Law and Development - Corporate Law |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wboper:20443&r=sea |
| By: | KAWASAKI Kenichi |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses the relative significance of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) at the macro and sectoral levels. The impacts of trade liberalization and facilitation measures in an FTAAP are studied using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model of global trade. The dynamic aspects of capital formation and productivity improvements are incorporated into a standard static model based on the most updated version of a global trade database. Real GDP of the APEC economies will be boosted on average by 1.9 percent by trade liberalization measures and 0.4 percent by trade facilitation measures, respectively. However, because of differences in the trade structure of the economies, the relative macroeconomic benefits of the economies from several regional trade agreements are shown to differ largely. Moreover, the relative significance of negative impacts in sensitive sectors such as agriculture may also vary according to several scenarios of trade liberalization. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esj:esridp:244&r=sea |
| By: | Endang L. Achadi; Anhari Achadi; Eko Pambudi; Puti Marzoeki |
| Abstract: | Indonesia launched Jampersal in 2011, a nationwide program to accelerate the reduction of maternal and newborn deaths. The program was financed by central government revenues and provided free and comprehensive maternal and neonatal care with an emphasis on promoting institutional deliveries. Jampersal providers were public and enlisted private facilities at the primary and secondary levels. In 2013, the World Bank and the Center for Family Welfare, University of Indonesia conducted a qualitative and quantitative study to assess the implementation and impact of the program in Garut District and Depok Municipality in West Java Province. The study found that Jampersal utilization was highest among women who were least educated, poor, and resided in rural areas. Utilization was also high among women with delivery complications. The study showed Jampersal only had an impact where institutional delivery coverage was still low such as in Garut District. In this district, women were 2.4 times more likely to have institutional deliveries after Jampersal. The finding suggests implementation of Jampersal policy may have to be adjusted according to the utilization pattern for efficiency and effectiveness. The government discontinued Jampersal with the launching of the National Health Insurance Program (JKN) on January 1, 2014. The study?s findings indicate the merit in reevaluating the policy to terminate the program, given that Jampersal helped increase institutional deliveries while voluntary participation in JKN remains low. |
| Keywords: | access to health care, access to health services, ambulance, Anesthesia, Antenatal Care, birth attendant, birth attendants, C-section, cancer, Center for Health, Cesarean ... See More + Section, Cesarean sections, child health, child health care, child mortality, child-bearing, childbearing, childbirth, clinics, communities, community activities, competencies, complications during pregnancy, Contraception, contraceptives, delivery care, delivery complications, DESCRIPTION, Development Planning, diseases, districts, doctor, doctors, drugs, educated women, elderly, emergency care, exposure to information, families, family members, Family Planning, family planning services, Family Welfare, financial management, first pregnancy, focus group discussions, general practitioners, government support, gynecology, health care, health care facilities, health centers, Health Facilities, Health Financing, Health Insurance, Health Organization, health professional, health providers, Health Research, health risks, health sector, Health Service, health service delivery, Health Service Provision, Health Services, health system, Home Affairs, home deliveries, home visits, Hospital, hospital beds, hospital management, hospital patients, hospital services, hospitals, Households, housing, Human Development, Human Resources, illiteracy, illiteracy rate, illness, immunization, income, indexes, insurance schemes, Intrauterine device, IUD, labor market, lack of knowledge, life expectancy, live births, local governments, low birth weight, marketing, mass media, maternal care, Maternal deaths, Maternal Health, Maternal Health Services, Maternal Mortality, Maternal Mortality Ratio, Maternity Care, medical staff, medical treatment, medicine, midwife, midwifery, Midwives, Military hospitals, military personnel, Millennium Development Goals, Ministry of Health, morbidity, Mortality, Mother, mothers, Multiple pregnancies, National Development, National Health Insurance, national level, neonatal care, neonatal conditions, neonatal health, newborn, newborn health, newborns, Nurses, Nutrition, obstetric complications, occupancy, occupancy rates, Occupation, patient, patient care, patients, Pharmacists, PHO, physicians, pills, policy decisions, Policy Formulation, political support, Postnatal Care, postpartum care, PPM, pregnancies, pregnancy, pregnancy complications, pregnant women, Primary Care, primary school, Probability, progress, Provider Payment, Public Health, public hospitals, qualitative approach, quality assurance, quality of care, reducing maternal mortality, referral services, referral system, rural area, rural areas, school years, secondary school, secondary schools, service delivery, service delivery points, service provider, service providers, Service Provision, service quality, service utilization, Skilled birth attendance, skilled birth attendants, Social Health Insurance, Socialization, Socioeconomic Status, Specialist, specialists, Spouse, surgery, Sustainable Development, traditional birth attendants, transportation, UNFPA, United Nations Population Fund, urban area, urban areas, vaginal delivery, villages, woman, women of child-bearing age, women of childbearing age, workers |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:hnpdps:91325&r=sea |
| By: | Peter Drysdale and Shiro Armstrong (East Asian Bureau of Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | The economic rise of Japan in the 1980s was underpinned by commitment to catching up through domestic reform and accommodated externally within the framework of the postwar multilateral institutions like the GATT/WTO. Regional cooperative processes like APEC later complemented that framework, encouraging unilateral reform across the region. Following the bursting of the asset bubble in the early 1990s and the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis, Japan turned from reliance on the multilateral system to policies based on preferential bilateralism in trade policy to secure its regional trading interests. Japan’s bilateral trade agreements have been largely ineffective in supporting the kind of deep-seated reform to regulatory institutions and competition policies needed to sustain long-term productivity growth. The evidence suggests that Japanese productivity has underperformed against its peers in the industrial world and Asia. Instead of using foreign economic policy as an instrument of domestic reform and productivity enhancement Japan has used bilateral deals largely as political and strategic tools. Re-establishing a link between Japan’s domestic reform agenda and its economic diplomacy is important for structural reform and national economic success, as is a more sure-footed engagement with China. |
| JEL: | F14 F15 F55 |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eab:wpaper:24449&r=sea |
| By: | World Bank Group |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policies Finance and Financial Sector Development - Currencies and Exchange Rates Economic Theory and Research Private Sector Development - Emerging Markets Finance and Financial Sector Development - Debt Markets Macroeconomics and Economic Growth Environment |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wboper:20438&r=sea |
| By: | Martine Rutten; Andrzej Tabeau; Frans Godeschalk |
| Abstract: | We develop a methodology for incorporating nutrition impacts in economy-wide analyses, providing entry points for where, when and how to act. It accounts for three channels of consumption, directly via primary commodities and indirectly via processed foods and food-related services, and produces indicators showing content by nutrient (currently calories, proteins, fats and carbohydrates), channel, source region and sector. The paper applies the framework in a CGE model (MAGNET) and uses FAO data to project nutritional outcomes resulting from the global food system over time. The analysis confirms that developing regions catch up with developed regions, with the USA at the high-end of nutrient consumption, whilst Southern Africa lags behind. In the USA the processed food channel dominates, whereas in Southern Africa the direct channel dominates. In the USA, and similar regions, fat taxes (thin subsidies) on unhealthy (healthy) processed foods, technologies reducing bad ingredients (e.g. trans fats, salt), improved food labelling, information and marketing campaigns, and/or targeted cash transfers may be worthwhile to investigate. In Southern Africa, and regions alike, technological advances increasing nutrient availability via primary agriculture and/or cash transfers enabling access may be more pertinent. The relative fixedness of sectoral origins shows that consumption habits change slowly and are visible only in the long term. For certain regions, including Southern Africa and USA, nutrient import dependency increases with substantial variations in regional sourcing. This implies that concerted action across the globe is crucial to reach diet, nutrition and health goals, and should include upcoming Asian economies, Africa (excl. Southern Africa) and the Middle East. Heterogeneity of results necessitates future ex-ante quantitative policy analyses on a more detailed and context-specific basis. |
| JEL: | C68 D12 C68 D12 I10 Q17 Q18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fsc:fspubl:28&r=sea |
| By: | de Melo, Jaime; Vijil, Mariana |
| Abstract: | At the Davos forum of January 2014, a group of 14 countries pledged to launch negotiations on liberalizing trade in"green goods"(also known as"environmental"goods), focusing on the elimination of tariffs for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation list of 54 products. The paper shows that the Davos group, with an average tariff of 1.8 percent, has little to offer as countries have avoided submitting products with tariff peaks for tariff reductions. Even if the list were extended to the 411 products on the World Trade Organization list, taking into account tariff dispersion, the tariff structure on environmental goods would be equivalent to a uniform tariff of 3.4 percent, about half the uniform tariff-equivalent for non-environmental goods. Enlarging the number of participants to low-income countries might be possible as, on average, their imports would not increase by more than 8 percent. However, because of the strong complementarities between trade in environmental goods and trade in environmental services, these should also be brought to the negotiation table, although difficulties in reaching agreement on their scope are likely to be great. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics&Policies,Free Trade,Trade Policy,Economic Theory&Research,International Trade and Trade Rules |
| Date: | 2014–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7061&r=sea |
| By: | TAKENAKA Ayumi; ISHIDA Kenji; NAKAMURO Makiko |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the economic mobility of foreign migrants in Japan. In a country that is largely regarded as homogeneous and closed to outsiders, how and to what extent do immigrants achieve economic success? A survey conducted by the authors revealed that the conventional assimilationist perspective does not fully explain immigrants' economic success in Japan. Migrants from the West experience what Chiswick and Miller (2011) refer to as "negative assimilation." That is, their earnings decline over time in Japan. While negative assimilation was not clearly observed among immigrants from neighboring Asian countries, wages among this population did not increase with the length of their stay in Japan. For both groups, the skills they brought from abroad were found to be largely accountable for their economic success, while locally specific human capital, such as education acquired in the host society, did not contribute to their earnings. |
| Date: | 2012–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esj:esridp:293&r=sea |
| By: | Marek Dabrowski |
| Abstract: | The European Union (EU) represents a large and highly integrated bloc which contributed 19.4% of global GDP and over 30% of global exports in 2012. As of July 1, 2013 it consists of 28 member states. All of them belong to the customs union and the Single European Market (SEM) in which most formal and informal barriers to the free movement of goods, services, people and capital have been removed. In addition, most members share a common currency (Euro) and form a free-travel Schengen zone. The important policy areas such as external trade, customs, competition, other regulations related to SEM, monetary policy (in the case of the Eurozone), certain iscal and other macroeconomic policies, part of indirect taxation, research, energy policy, etc. have been transferred to the competence of supranational EU bodies. Several other questions such as immigration and asylum, visas, common border management, justice and home affairs, and foreign and security policy remain subject to coordination and common decisions. Since the beginning of its existence, the EU has been involved in building close economic and political relations with non-member countries, involving a variety of legal forms. The EU has always been lexible in offering or accepting the exact cooperation model, trying to adjust itself to the speciic needs, constraints and sovereignty concerns of individual partners. The EU has never pushed any country to join the EU or sign association/free trade agreements. EU membership is considered a scarce good, membership in the elite club of developed and rich nations, a prize for good policies and institutions of the potential candidate. The same principle works in the case of association and free trade agreements with countries which are not going to join the EU: it is an offer and a prize for good performance rather than an instrument of economic or political pressure. It is the choice of a potential partner to accept, postpone or reject such a cooperation offer. The EU’s experience in building a complex and lexible net of economic and political relations with non-member countries can serve as a good lesson and example to follow by other regional integration blocs which also face the problem of shaping their external relations with countries which are interested in close cooperation but not membership in a given bloc. On the other hand, the EU’s institutional lexibility creates room for negotiating cross-regional trade and economic integration deals not only with individual countries but also with other blocs such as NAFTA, MERCOSUR, ASEAN or the Eurasian Economic Community. |
| Keywords: | integration, European Union, association agreement, free trade agreement, EU enlargement, European Neighborhood Policy |
| JEL: | F13 F15 F55 N74 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sec:cnrepo:0119&r=sea |