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on South East Asia |
| By: | Nguyen, Cuong; Vu, Linh |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the pattern and the impact of migration and remittances on household welfare in Vietnam using fixed-effects regressions and panel data from Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys 2010 and 2012. Overall, the effect of migration as well as remittances on employment of remaining members on home households is small. People in households with migration and remittances tend to work less than people in other households. There is no evidence that migration and remittances can help household members to work more on non-farm activities. Remittances, especially international remittances help receiving households increase per capita income and per capita expenditure. Although migration leads to an increase in remittances, it also leads to a reduction in income earned by migrants if they had not migrated. However, per capita consumption expenditure of migrant-sending households increases because of a reduction in household size |
| Keywords: | Migration, remittances, impact evaluation, household welfare, poverty, Vietnam. |
| JEL: | I3 O15 R23 |
| Date: | 2017–03–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80084&r=sea |
| By: | Brata, Aloysius Gunadi |
| Abstract: | This study explores the impact on Java’s economic geography of railways built by the Dutch colonial government. Pre-1940 Dutch railway construction affords an historical experiment on the spatial distribution of economic activities across urban Java both before and after 1940. Using city data for over 100 years, the study finds that the railways had a short-term impact on the distribution of population, but that in the long run colonial railway investment lost its advantages. Until 1930, the railways substituted for the Great Mail Road. Between 1930 and 2010, however, the Great Mail Road regained an earlier importance in shaping urban Javanese patterns. The study also draws important lessons for recent Indonesian infrastructure development in Indonesia, notably in regard to the railway system itself. |
| Keywords: | colonial railways, history, economic geography, Java |
| JEL: | N75 N95 R12 |
| Date: | 2017–07–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80097&r=sea |
| By: | John R. Bowen |
| Abstract: | This paper considers arguments about Islam and women’s welfare, and, at greater length, how legal systems with Islamic elements treat women, with a focus on how women fare in Islamic family courts. Key methodological issues include how to focus on real-world views and practices rather than only texts, disentangle the effects of patriarchal regional cultures from the effects of Islamic law, and compare the gendered effects of Islamic court practices with the most probable local alternatives. We look in greater detail at three countries—Tunisia, Indonesia, and Iran—to detect probable mechanisms shaping women’s access to divorce and to property. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2017-152&r=sea |
| By: | Abel Brodeur; Warn N. Lekfuangfu; Yanos Zylberberg |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the determinants behind the spatial distribution of the sex industry in Thailand. We relate the development of the sex industry to an early temporary demand shock, i.e., U.S. military presence during the Vietnam War. Comparing the surroundings of Thai military bases used by the U.S. army to districts close to unused Thai bases, we find that there are currently 5 times more commercial sex workers in districts near former U.S. bases. The development of the sex industry is also explained by a high price elasticity of supply due to female migration from regions affected by an agricultural crisis. Finally, we study a consequence induced by the large numbers of sex workers in few red-light districts: the HIV outbreak in the early 1990s. |
| Keywords: | persistence, industry location, sex industry, HIV/AIDS |
| JEL: | O17 O18 N15 J46 J47 I28 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1489&r=sea |
| By: | Nguyen, Cuong; Nguyen, Lam |
| Abstract: | This study examines intra-generational and intergenerational mobility of employment and income in Vietnam during the 2004-2008 and 2010-2014 periods. It finds rather high mobility across income quintiles. There was high mobility of individuals by occupational skills but less mobility by employment status and sectors. The upward mobility of occupation increased over time because of the increase in skilled occupation. The intergenerational elasticity of earnings for parents and children is estimated at around 0.36. The intergenerational elasticity is very similar for 2004 and 2014. Education plays an important role in improving the intergenerational mobility. The intergenerational elasticity for children without education degrees and those with post-secondary degrees is 0.51 and 0.17, respectively. With post-secondary degree, 80% of people whose parents are unskilled have skilled or non-manual occupation. |
| Keywords: | Social mobility, intra-generational mobility, intergenerational mobility, occupational mobility, income mobility, Vietnam |
| JEL: | D1 J1 J6 |
| Date: | 2017–02–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80083&r=sea |
| By: | Morais, Joanna; Thi, Huong Trinh |
| Abstract: | This paper contributes to the analysis of the impact of socioeconomic factors, like food expenditure level and urbanization, on diet patterns in Vietnam, from 2004 to 2014. Contrary to the existing literature, we focus on the diet balance in terms of macronutrients consumption (protein, fat and carbohydrate) and we take into account the fact that the volumes of each macronutrient are not independent. In other words, we are interested in the shares of each macronutrient in the total calorie intake. We use the compositional data analysis (CODA) to describe the evolution of diet patterns over time, and to model the impact of household characteristics on the macronutrient shares vector. We compute food expenditure elasticities of macronutrient shares, and we compare them to classical elasticities for macronutrient volumes and total calorie intake. The compositional model highlights the important role of food expenditure, size of the household and dwelling region in the determination of diet choices. Our results are consistent with the rest of the literature, but they have the advantage to highlight the substitution effects between macronutrients in the context of nutrition transition. |
| Keywords: | Macronutrient shares; diet pattern; compositional regression models; expenditure elasticity; Vietnam. |
| JEL: | C02 C21 C51 P46 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:31800&r=sea |
| By: | Chen, Xi (Yale University) |
| Abstract: | China and some other Asian countries have experienced skewed sex ratios, triggering intense competition and pressure in the marriage market. Meanwhile, China has more smokers than any other country, with half of men smoke while few women smoke. Men are the major income earners in most Chinese families and thus bear much of the financial burden in preparation for children's marriage. This paper investigates how a demographic factor – a large number of surplus men in the marriage market in China – affects their fathers' smoking behavior. We utilize two household longitudinal surveys as well as a random subsample of the China Population Census to examine fathers' smoking in response to skewed sex ratios. Strikingly, fathers smoke more for families with a son living in communities with higher sex ratios. In contrast, those with a daughter do not demonstrate this pattern. Coping with the marriage market pressure is a more plausible pathway linking the observed skewed sex ratios among children and intense smoking among fathers. Considering worsening sex ratios and highly competitive marriage market in the coming decade as well as lasting health impacts due to smoking, policies suppressing unbalanced sex ratios could lead to welfare gains. |
| Keywords: | sex ratios, marriage market, paternal smoking, stress |
| JEL: | J13 D12 I19 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10860&r=sea |
| By: | Shin-ichi Fukuda (Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo); Mariko Tanaka (Faculty of Economics, Musashino University) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent spillovers from Asian financial market shocks have risen during the past two decades. In the first part, we examine spillover effects in stock markets. Estimating the GVAR (Global Vector Autoregressive) model, we find that spillover effects from emerging Asia became large in the post GFC (Global Financial Crisis) period. However, we also find that most of the spillover effects were from shocks in manufacturing sector rather than from those in financial sector. This implies that the spillover effects increased in the post GFC period because of increased manufacturing sector's shocks in emerging Asia. In the second part, we examine spillover effects across different foreign exchange rates. As in the stock markets, spillover effects from emerging Asia became large in the foreign exchange markets in the post GFC period. In particular, our high frequency data analysis suggests that an exchange rate policy change by the PBC (the People's Bank of China) had positive spillover effects on the most of the advanced currencies in the post GFC period. The empirical results imply that the impact of Chinese shocks has been rising in the global financial markets. |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:fseres:2017cf1050&r=sea |
| By: | Oscar Claveria (AQR-IREA, University of Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | The present study aims to cluster the world's main tourist destinations according to the growth of the economic performance of the tourist activity and of the tourist and economic development experienced during the last decade. With this objective, we combine the information from a set of tourist and economic indicators for the main 45 tourist destinations over the period between 2000 and 2010. Destinations are ranked with respect to their average growth rate over the sample period. By assigning a numerical value to each country corresponding to its position, all the information is summarised into two components (“economic performance of tourist activity” and “tourist and economic development”) via multivariate techniques for dimensionality reduction: multidimensional scaling (MDS) and categorical principal components analysis (CATPCA). By means of perceptual maps, we find that destinations can be clustered into four different groups. The first one, dominated by Western and Northern Europe markets, contains some of the top destinations (France, Spain and the United States). A second one, with a predominance of Mediterranean destinations (Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Israel), obtains high scores in both dimensions. In the third one, we find Cambodia and China, alongside Egypt and Turkey. Finally, a fourth group dominated by Eastern Europe destinations (Bulgaria, Croatia and Latvia) with low scores in both dimensions. |
| Keywords: | Tourist destinations; Positioning; Perceptual maps; Multidimensional Scaling (MDS); Categorical Principal Components Analysis (CATPCA). JEL classification: A12; C38; F43; M31; Z3; Z32 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aqr:wpaper:201707&r=sea |
| By: | Schiff, Maurice (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of education, trade, governance and distance on technology diffusion and TFP in Latin America – specifically South America and Mexico (SAM) – and East Asia, over the 32 years preceding the Great Recession (1976–2007). Findings are: i) TFP rises with education, trade, governance (ETG) and trade's R&D content, and falls with distance to the (closest) North; ii) the East Asia – SAM education gap's impact equals that of trade plus governance; iii) an increase in SAM's ETG to East Asia's level raises TFP by over 100 percent and fully accounts for its TFP gap with East Asia; and iv) South America's TFP loss relative to Mexico due to its greater distance to 'US–Canada' (Europe and Japan) is 9.30 (0.02) percent. |
| Keywords: | East Asia and LAC, technology diffusion, productivity, education, trade, governance, distance |
| JEL: | F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10843&r=sea |
| By: | Firdaus Hafidz (Academic Unit of Health Economics, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds); Tim Ensor (Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds); Sandy Tubeuf (Academic Unit of Health Economics, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds) |
| Abstract: | Despite increased national health expenditure in health facilities in Indonesia, health outcomes remain low. The aim of our study is to examine the factors determining the relative efficiency of public primary care facilities. Using linked national data sources from facility-, households, and village-based surveys, we measure the efficiency of 185 primary care facilities across fifteen provinces in Indonesia with output oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Inputs include the number of doctors, midwife and nurses, and other staff while outputs are the number of outpatients and maternal child health patients. We run truncated regression in second stage DEA and one stage SFA analysis to assess contextual characteristics influencing health facilities performance. Our results indicate a wide variation in efficiency between health facilities. High-performing primary care facilities are in affluent areas. Primary care facilities located in urban areas, in Java and Bali Island, with high coverage of insurance scheme for the poor perform better than other geographical location.We find an inconclusive impact of quality of care, patient mix, and availability of inpatient services on efficiency. This paper concludes by highlighting the characteristics of primary care facilities that have the potential to increase efficiency. |
| Keywords: | Efficiency, Primary care facilities, frontier analysis, data envelopment analysis, stochastic frontier analysis, Indonesia |
| JEL: | C50 I10 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lee:wpaper:1703&r=sea |
| By: | Ho, Sin-Yu; Njindan Iyke, Bernard |
| Abstract: | We set out to assess the effects of exchange rate uncertainty on real consumption in selected Asian countries. Consumption influences business cycles, which in turn shape short-run monetary policy decisions. Hence, understanding factors driving consumption is appealing to policymakers. In the extant literature, few studies have analysed the effects of uncertainty on consumption. The available ones generally focus on the long-run effects, in spite of the fact that the short-run persistence and adjustments to equilibrium are equally relevant. Our study takes this limitation seriously by distinguishing the short- and long-run effects of exchange rate uncertainty on consumption. Using a flexible dynamic panel data technique that allows long-run effects to be homogeneous and the short-run effects to be heterogeneous, we find that uncertainty impedes consumption in the long run. In the short run, however, the effects are immaterial. This evidence remains robust to the measure of uncertainty, asymmetric uncertainty, the role of consumer prices, and the global financial crisis of 2008. By decomposing uncertainty into its temporary and permanent components, we find that the latter have a stronger effect on consumption in the long run than the former. Although both components demand policy attention, the evidence suggests that policymakers should be more concerned with permanent uncertainty. |
| Keywords: | Real Consumption; Exchange Rate Uncertainty; Asian Countries. |
| JEL: | C23 E31 F31 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80096&r=sea |
| By: | La, Meeryung (Korea Institute for International Economic Policy) |
| Abstract: | The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is an ongoing free trade agreement involving ASEAN member states (AMSs) and six trading partners: Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. RCEP negotiations were launched in November 2012, and 18 rounds of negotiation have been held, along with six ministerial meetings and three intersessional meetings. Two chapters, namely "Economic and Technical Cooperation" and "Small and Medium-sized Enterprises," have been concluded, and other chapters are still in progress with some of them nearing conclusion. To date, progress in the RCEP negotiations has been sluggish due to disagreement over the modality of tariff reduction on trade in goods, liberalization of services, and investment framework. In regard to trade in goods, it is known that the proportion of products committed to eliminate tariffs has not been finalized yet. It is hard to balance the interests of RCEP participating countries (RPCs) due to the different industrial structures and levels of development among participating countries. It seems unrealistic to expect conclusion of the RCEP by the end of this year, but it is likely that considerable progress will be made during ASEAN's 50th anniversary. With the global trade slowdown, the importance of the RCEP to keep markets open and deepen integration is increasing. RPCs should continue their efforts to reach high-standard and economically meaningful outcomes. The agreed outcome should be able to reduce intra-regional transaction costs through simplification and harmonization of rules of origin, customs procedures and standards. Since RPCs have already established over-lapping FTAs with member countries, it needs significant improvements over the existing ASEAN+1 FTAs to induce economically meaningful gains from the RCEP. |
| Keywords: | RCEP; ASEAN |
| Date: | 2017–06–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:kiepwe:2017_012&r=sea |
| By: | Tetsuji Okazaki (Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo); Toshihiro Okubo (Faculty of Economics, Keio University); Eric Strobl (Ecole Polytechnique) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent spillovers from Asian financial market shocks have risen during the past two decades. In the first part, we examine spillover effects in stock markets. Estimating the GVAR (Global Vector Autoregressive) model, we find that spillover effects from emerging Asia became large in the post GFC (Global Financial Crisis) period. However, we also find that most of the spillover effects were from shocks in manufacturing sector rather than from those in financial sector. This implies that the spillover effects increased in the post GFC period because of increased manufacturing sector's shocks in emerging Asia. In the second part, we examine spillover effects across different foreign exchange rates. As in the stock markets, spillover effects from emerging Asia became large in the foreign exchange markets in the post GFC period. In particular, our high frequency data analysis suggests that an exchange rate policy change by the PBC (the People's Bank of China) had positive spillover effects on the most of the advanced currencies in the post GFC period. The empirical results imply that the impact of Chinese shocks has been rising in the global financial markets. |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:fseres:2017cf1051&r=sea |
| By: | Shahbaz, Muhammad; Syed, Jawad; Kumar, Mantu; Hammoudeh, Shawkat |
| Abstract: | We examine the causal relationship between globalization and CO2 emissions for 25 developed economies in Asia, North America, Western Europe and Oceania using both time series and panel data techniques, spanning the annual data period of 1970–2014. Because of the presence of cross-sectional dependence in the panel, we employ Pesaran’s (2007) cross-sectional augmented panel unit root (CIPS) test to ascertain unit root properties. The Westerlund (2007) cointegration test is also used to ascertain the presence of a long-run association between globalization and carbon emissions. The long-run heterogeneous panel elasticities are estimated using the Pesaran (2006) common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG) estimator and the Eberhardt and Teal (2010) augmented mean group (AMG) estimator. The causality between the variables is examined by employing the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) and Emirmahmutoglu and Kose (2011) Granger causality tests. The empirical results reveal that globalization increases carbon emissions, and thus the globalization-driven carbon emissions hypothesis is valid. This empirical analysis suggests insightful policy guidelines for policy makers using ‘globalization’ as an economic tool for better long-run environmental policy. |
| Keywords: | Carbon Emissions, Causality, Globalization |
| JEL: | A10 |
| Date: | 2017–07–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80055&r=sea |
| By: | Vincent Chatellier |
| Abstract: | The increase in beef consumption in several Asian countries is helping to strengthen competitive games between the world's leading beef exporters, including Australia, India, Brazil and the United States. The main importers of beef and veal, including the United States, China (with Hong-Kong), Japan and Russia, have some differentiated trajectories according to changes in domestic demand for beef and veal, sanitary conditions in supplier countries and sometimes geopolitical issues. The European Union, which is experiencing both a decline in its production and consumption of beef, is not a major player in international trade in this sector. Domestic demand is largely satisfied by European products and significant flows of live cattle and beef take place between Member States. Using the available customs databases both on a global scale (Comtrade and Baci) and the European Union (Comext), this article proposes an analysis on the evolution of the productive and commercial situation of the main players in the beef cattle sector for the period 2000 to 2015. |
| Keywords: | international trade, exchange, exports, imports, beef, live cattle |
| JEL: | Q13 Q17 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rae:wpaper:201706&r=sea |