nep-sea New Economics Papers
on South East Asia
Issue of 2019‒09‒23
fifteen papers chosen by
Kavita Iyengar
Asian Development Bank

  1. Evaluating Education Systems By Nicolas Gravel; Edward Levavasseur; Patrick Moyes
  2. Evaluating Education Systems By Nicolas Gravel; Edward Levavasseur; Patrick Moyes
  3. Governance and foreign direct investment: comparative study between Arab Maghreb countries and ASEAN By Aloui, Zouhaier
  4. Stranded assets risk derails Vietnam's plan for new coal power plants By Minh Ha-Duong
  5. Barriers to Mobility or Sorting? Sources and Aggregate Implications of Income Gaps across Sectors and Locations in Indonesia By José Pulido; Tomasz Swiecki
  6. Winning a district election in a clientelistic society: Evidence from decentralized Indonesia By Farah, Alfa
  7. Economy of Kalimantan: a Snapshot By idris, rafiq; mansur, kasim; marso, marso
  8. Three scenarios for coal power in Vietnam By Minh Ha-Duong
  9. Regional Efficiency Dispersion, Convergence, and Efficiency Clusters: Evidence from the Provinces of Indonesia 1990-2010 By Mendez, Carlos
  10. Determinants of foreign and domestic non-listed real estate funds flow in India: An ARDL Approach By Ashish Gupta; Graeme Newell; Deepak Bajaj; Satya N. Mandal
  11. The spillover effects of Chinese economy on Southeast Asia and Oceania By Anna Sznajderska; Mariusz Kapuściński
  12. From Malthus to Malthus By Pedro Cavalcanti Ferreira; Alexander Monge-Nara
  13. A Quantitative Theory of Hard and Soft Sovereign Defaults By Grey Gordon; Pablo Guerron-Quintana
  14. Rethinking The Experience Of Building A Security Community: The Case Of Asean By Alexander S. Korolev; Yulia A. Belous
  15. Self-financing, Parental Transfer, and College Education By Sunha Myong; Jungho Lee

  1. By: Nicolas Gravel (Centre de Sciences Humaines, 2, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road, 11 0011 Delhi, India. & Aix-Marseille Univ., CNRS, EHESS, Centrale Marseille, AMSE); Edward Levavasseur (Aix-Marseille Univ., CNRS, EHESS, Centrale Marseille, AMSE); Patrick Moyes (CNRS, Université de Bordeaux IV)
    Abstract: This paper proposes two dominance criteria for evaluating education systems described as joint distributions of the pupils' cognitive skill achievements and family backgrounds. The first criterion is shown to be the smallest transitive ranking of education systems compatible with three elementary principles. The first principle requires any improvement in the cog-nitive skill of a child with a given family background to be recorded favorably. The second principle demands that any child's cognitive skill be all the more favorably appraised as the child is coming from an unfavorable background. The third principle states that when two different skills and family backgrounds are allocated between two children, it is preferable that the high skill be given to the low background child than the other way around. The criterion considers system A to be better than system B when, for every pair of reference background and skill, the fraction of children with both a lower background and a better skill than the reference is larger in A than in B. Our second criterion completes the first by adding to the three principles the elitist requirement that a mean-preserving spread in the skills of two children with the same background be recorded favorably. We apply our criteria to the ranking of education systems of 43 countries, taking the PISA score in mathematics as the measure of cognitive skills and the largest of the two parents International Socio Economic Index as the indicator of background. We show that, albeit incomplete, our criteria enables conclusive comparisons of about 19% of all the possible pairs of countries. Education systems of fast-growing Asian economies-in particular Vietnam-appear at the top of our rankings while those of relatively wealthy arabic countries such as Lebanon, United Arab Emirates and Jordan are at the bottom. The fraction of countries that can be ranked successfully happens to be only mildly increased as a result of adding elitism to the three other principles.
    Keywords: education, Inequality, family background, opportunities, dominance, math scores, international comparisons
    JEL: D63 I21 I23 O57
    Date: 2019–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1922&r=all
  2. By: Nicolas Gravel (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - Ecole Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Edward Levavasseur (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - Ecole Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Patrick Moyes (GREThA - Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)
    Abstract: This paper proposes two dominance criteria for evaluating education systems described as joint distributions of the pupils' cognitive skill achievements and family backgrounds. The first criterion is shown to be the smallest transitive ranking of education systems compatible with three elementary principles. The first principle requires any improvement in the cog-nitive skill of a child with a given family background to be recorded favorably. The second principle demands that any child's cognitive skill be all the more favorably appraised as the child is coming from an unfavorable background. The third principle states that when two different skills and family backgrounds are allocated between two children, it is preferable that the high skill be given to the low background child than the other way around. The criterion considers system A to be better than system B when, for every pair of reference background and skill, the fraction of children with both a lower background and a better skill than the reference is larger in A than in B. Our second criterion completes the first by adding to the three principles the elitist requirement that a mean-preserving spread in the skills of two children with the same background be recorded favorably. We apply our criteria to the ranking of education systems of 43 countries, taking the PISA score in mathematics as the measure of cognitive skills and the largest of the two parents International Socio Economic Index as the indicator of background. We show that, albeit incomplete, our criteria enables conclusive comparisons of about 19% of all the possible pairs of countries. Education systems of fast-growing Asian economies-in particular Vietnam-appear at the top of our rankings while those of relatively wealthy arabic countries such as Lebanon, United Arab Emirates and Jordan are at the bottom. The fraction of countries that can be ranked successfully happens to be only mildly increased as a result of adding elitism to the three other principles.
    Keywords: education,inequality,family background,opportunities,dominance,math scores,international comparisons
    Date: 2019–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02284265&r=all
  3. By: Aloui, Zouhaier
    Abstract: The interest of this paper is to show the impact of governance on foreign direct investment and its different effects among Maghreb Arab countries and Asian countries. The results of the effect of political stability, the rule of law, the quality of regulation and the way responsibility and Showed That governance Positively and Significantly contributed to Improving the attractiveness of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Asia purpose in the Arab Maghreb countries, and the way responsibility: has a significant negative impact on FDI. The objective of this work is to study the impact of governance on direct foreign investment (FDI) for a panel of Maghreb Arab countries in Asia countries during 1996 to 2014. Empirical verification generally shows significant results in Asia and is not significant in countries of Arab Maghreb. Indeed, thesis results in Asian countries claim that governance plays a key role in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI).
    Keywords: governance, foreign direct investment, Arab Maghreb, Asia, panel data.
    JEL: F2 F21 F23 K12
    Date: 2019–09–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:95835&r=all
  4. By: Minh Ha-Duong (CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CIRAD - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech, VIET - Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition)
    Abstract: In 2016, Vietnam planned to build a fleet of new coal-fired power plants, expanding capacity to 54.5 GW in 2030, from 13.1 GW in 2015. Three years later, the risk of stranded assets not only made this plan sub-optimal, it also made it infeasible because investors are looking elsewhere.
    Date: 2019–08–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:ciredw:halshs-02263622&r=all
  5. By: José Pulido (Banco de la Republica - Central Bank of); Tomasz Swiecki (UBC)
    Abstract: Existence of large income gaps between agricultural and non-agricultural workers in developing countries is well known, but the exact source of the gaps is debated. The two main hypotheses, barriers to labor mobility and sorting of workers based on unobserved comparative advantage, have distinct predictions for aggregate efficiency but are difficult to distinguish using only cross-sectional data typically available for developing countries. We use panel data from Indonesia Family Life Survey to document that workers who move out of agriculture see an income gain of over 20% while those who move into agriculture see a similar income loss, even if they stay in the same location. We then ask whether even such within-worker sector premia tell us anything about the presence of barriers to sectoral mobility. By themselves, they do not. However, taking into account a richer set of moments of the joint sector-income distribution over time allows us to identify the role of self-selection across sectors and of barriers to sectoral mobility. Our estimates indicate that while self-selection is important, there are also barriers that significantly misallocate workers across sectors. Removing such barriers would lead 35% of workers to reallocate and as a result would increase aggregate output by as much as 21%.
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed019:1298&r=all
  6. By: Farah, Alfa
    Abstract: Lower-level officials often engage in clientelistic relations with the upper-level government. The nature of these relations might be determined by institutional factors such as how the lower-level officials come into their position. This paper specifically highlights the different political incentives that elected versus appointed lower-level officials have for becoming political intermediaries for the upper-level government, and it investigates empirically how these differing incentives bring electoral consequences. Upon exploiting a natural experiment in Indonesia, the study found that the elected village headmen have stronger incentives to support the incumbent mayor than the appointed village headmen do. The results suggest that while civil service reforms might weaken the bureaucratic clientelism, the pre-existing patronclient relations that are deeply embedded in the society are immersed in local political competitions; thus, this practice challenges political consolidation in the young democracy.
    Keywords: clientelism,selection mechanism,local elections
    JEL: D72 H77 H83 O17 O18
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ciwdps:22019&r=all
  7. By: idris, rafiq; mansur, kasim; marso, marso
    Abstract: This chapter aims to give a snapshot of the economies in Kalimantan provinces. Salient factors such as sharing common border with North Kalimantan, Kalimantan as Sabah’s backdoor neighbor with huge market size of over 4 times than Sabah and the relocation of Indonesia’s capital from Jakarta to Kalimantan, have stimulated the interests of many analysts to research on the structure of Kalimantan’s economy in general.
    Keywords: Kalimantan, Economy, Snapshot, Sabah
    JEL: A10 F00 O11
    Date: 2019–08–30
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:95899&r=all
  8. By: Minh Ha-Duong (CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CIRAD - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech)
    Abstract: This note offers three narratives about the future of coal based electricity generation in Vietnam. "Blazing up" corresponds to the power development plan 7 revised and updated as of March 2019. "Closed window" tells what we think would happen under pure market forces. "Coal peak" tells what could happen if the State continues to steer the electricity system into the energy transition, decisively and without imposing high costs to stakeholders.
    Date: 2019–08–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:ciredw:halshs-02263898&r=all
  9. By: Mendez, Carlos
    Abstract: This paper studies efficiency convergence across provinces in Indonesia over the 1990-2010 period. Through the lens of both classical and distributional convergence frameworks, the dispersion dynamics of pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency are contrasted. The results suggest that—on average—there is regional convergence in both measures of efficiency. However, results from the distributional framework indicate the existence of two separate convergence clusters within the pure technical efficiency distribution. Moreover, since scale efficiency is characterized by only one convergence cluster, the two clusters of pure technical efficiency appear to be driving the overall efficiency dynamics of Indonesia.
    Keywords: Efficiency, Convergence, Distribution-based clustering, Nonparametric distribution, Indonesia
    JEL: R11 R12 R58
    Date: 2019–09–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:95972&r=all
  10. By: Ashish Gupta; Graeme Newell; Deepak Bajaj; Satya N. Mandal
    Abstract: Traditionally in India, real estate development was funded by High Net-worth Individuals (HNIs) through high-cost debt and equity. The opening of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in real estate in 2005, made non-listed real estate funds (NREFs) an important source of capital for Indian real estate development. During 2005 to 2015 foreign NREFs contributed more than three fourth (3/4th) of entire NREFs investment in the country. Foreign NREFs significantly contributed to increase transparency and corporate governance in Indian real estate sector. However, in times of volatility, especially after the global financial crisis of 2008 foreign NREFs became conservative. Domestic NREFs were the major investors in the market during this period. NREFs investment in real estate is impacted by the macroeconomic environment of the host country. Most of the literature focuses on the drivers of foreign investment and there is hardly any literature on domestic investment drivers. This study, in contrast, simultaneously evaluates the domestic and foreign NREFs drivers. Unlike many other Asian countries (like China, Singapore and Hong Kong) very limited previous research is available in Indian real estate.This study will examine macroeconomic and capital market factors (like inflation, currency risk, interest rate volatility, M3, BSE realty index, BSE Sensex and GDP) to determine the drivers of domestic and foreign NREFs flow in the Indian real estate sector during 2005 to 2017. This study will use secondary data from various sources including published reports and data on various macroeconomic, capital market and NREFs investment data (from World Bank, IMF, RBI, OECD, VCC Edge, etc.). Overall, this paper will evaluate the significant determinants of NREFs flow in Indian real estate.
    Keywords: ARDL; Determinants of capital flow; Foreign and domestic investment; India; Non-Listed Real Estate Funds
    JEL: R3
    Date: 2019–01–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arz:wpaper:eres2019_258&r=all
  11. By: Anna Sznajderska (Warsaw School of Economics and Narodowy Bank Polski); Mariusz Kapuściński (Warsaw School of Economics and Narodowy Bank Polski)
    Abstract: The slowdown of economy and widening of domestic imbalances in China bothers economists and politicians across the globe. The effects of a Chinese transition to a new growth model for other countries are uncertain. We quantify them by estimating the influence of a negative output shock in China on a number of different economies. We concentrate on China’s neighbouring countries. We compare the results from the Global VAR model and from the Bayesian VAR models that include Chinese variables as endogenous. Also we search for determinants of Chinese spillovers for the global economy. To this end, having a large number of factors potentially explaining differences in responses compared to the number of observations, we use Bayesian model averaging. We find that spillovers are stronger to economies with less flexible exchange rates, a higher share of manufacturing in gross value added and to economies which are larger.
    Keywords: global VAR, Bayesian VAR, China’s slowdown, spillovers, structural characteristics
    JEL: C32 E32 F10 O53
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbp:nbpmis:315&r=all
  12. By: Pedro Cavalcanti Ferreira (EPGE-FGV); Alexander Monge-Nara (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)
    Abstract: Underneath a veneer of common structural transformation patterns, countries exhibit vast differences in their growth and allocation of human capital. In the one extreme, countries such as Korea, Taiwan, and, more recently, some segments of China, have transitioned, within two generations, from prototypical agrarian Malthusian economies to fast-growing, high-skill-intensive modern service economies. In the other extreme, quite a few countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia have transitioned from similar initial Malthusian economies to urban, slow-growing, pseudo-Malthusian economies that are intensive in low-skill service jobs. We argue that a key determinant for such divergent paths lies in the direction of education policies of countries. We show that in the data, those countries that prioritize subsidies to university education in detriment of elementary and secondary education are those with large segments of the population with low skills, i.e., what we call the pseudo-Malthusian state. In contrast, countries that emphasize subsidizing high quality elementary and secondary education, possibly in detriment of higher education are the ones that have converged to the group of modern economies, which are mostly populated by high-skilled workers. In our model, we enhance the traditional quantity-quality fertility-vs-education model with households with multiple skill levels and multiple choices for the education of the children. The model replicates quite naturally that countries that emphasize lower levels of education eventually converge to a modern, skill intensive economy, while those which emphasize financing higher education will transition from a Malthusian economy to another.
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed019:1552&r=all
  13. By: Grey Gordon (FRB Richmond); Pablo Guerron-Quintana (Boston College)
    Abstract: Empirical research on sovereign default shows "hard defaults"---defined as defaults with above-average haircuts---have worse outcomes for GDP growth than "soft defaults" and that sovereigns continue to borrow post-default. We propose a model capable of capturing these and other empirical regularities. In it, the sovereign makes period-by-period decisions of whether to make the prescribed debt payments or not. Hard defaults arise when the sovereign repeatedly \emph{chooses} to not pay over the course of many years. Unlike in the standard model, default does not exogenously result in autarky. Rather, autarky-like conditions arise endogenously as the shocks leading to default result in higher spreads than the sovereign is willing to pay. The calibrated model predicts that growth shocks are the main determinant of whether default is hard or soft. We use the model and the particle filter to decompose how much of the empirical correlation between default intensity and output growth is selection and how much is causal. Decomposition of model forces shows that one-third (one-tenth) of hard (soft) defaults are explained by actual default costs with the rest explained by selection. A historical decomposition of shocks reveals that transitory shocks and trend shocks were the primary drivers of the Argentinean defaults in the 1980s and the 2000s, respectively. Estimated haircuts were 20 percentage points higher in the 2001 default than in the one in the 1980s, consistent with the data. Our estimated productivity shocks coincide with major events such as the convertibility plan and the Asian crisis.
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed019:412&r=all
  14. By: Alexander S. Korolev (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Yulia A. Belous (National Research University Higher School of Economics)
    Abstract: This article discusses the structural elements of the concept of a security community using the example of ASEAN. The relevance of studying this phenomenon has risen dramatically due to the official launch of the ASEAN Community in 2015, which consists of three key elements – the Economic Community, the Political and Security Community and the Socio-Cultural Community. The article argues that such generally accepted factors as economic interdependence, the political regimes, and the support of liberal ideas should be considered only as triggers which may facilitate the transition of security communities to a more advanced stage. In this regard, more significant variables are the “we feeling” among ruling elites and the population, the presence of common goals, the interests and values shared by all members of the community, adherence to key norms and principles of functioning of the union, the presence of strong channels of communication between states, the ability of collective response of states to internal and external challenges, and peaceful conflict resolution
    Keywords: security community, ASEAN, institutions, collective identity, values, norms and principles.
    JEL: Z
    Date: 2018
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:33/ir/2019&r=all
  15. By: Sunha Myong (Singapore Management University); Jungho Lee (Singapore Management University)
    Abstract: We study a college-financing problem by a family when children can self-finance by working. We develop and estimate a model in which children's human-capital accumulation depends on both monetary and time investment. The model explains how endogenous interactions between parental transfer, student loans, and self-financing lead to heterogeneous human-capital accumulation during college. Consumption smoothing is an important motive for self-financing if children can borrow only for education but not for consumption (the tied-to-investment constraint). When the constraint binds, parental transfer can increase children's monetary and time investment by reducing children's labor supply during college. This effect is more pronounced among high-ability students, and the model predicts the parental transfer in college financing increases by child ability, as observed in the data. Heterogeneous working hours by college students explain 14\% of the standard deviation of the within-group-income inequality among four-year-college attendees. Work-study program with a cap in working hours can effectively reduce income inequalities without substantial crowd-out by parents. Expanding loans for consumption are more effective in reducing income inequalities, but it results in substantial crowd-out by parents.
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed019:106&r=all

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