International Economics Commons^™

Japan As A Clean Energy Leader, Stefan N. Norbom

Gettysburg Economic Review

Over the past several decades, Japan’s energy strategy had positioned it as the world’s leader in clean and efficient electricity production and usage. This strategy, heavily dependent on nuclear energy, was essentially destroyed by one of history’s largest earthquakes, followed by a tsunami which overwhelmed five nuclear reactors on March 11, 2011. As of April 2012, all of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors have been shut down and it is uncertain when and how many may be restarted. This paper examines Japan’s options for crafting a new way forward with an energy policy to power the world’s third largest economy while …

Review Of Daniel Mockli's "Strategic Trends 2012: Key Developments In Global Affairs, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This review essay describes and analyzes the content of this annual compilation of international affairs essays published by the Zurich-based Center for Strategic Studies.

Beneath And Beyond The Chinese Miracle, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

China’s rapid economic progress from an impoverished communist state to the world’s second largest economy within just three decades has enthralled many economists. That the country shifted from the classical centrally-planned command economy to one espousing free market practices while maintaining communist rule, has all given rise to this question: What exactly is the China model? Is it the hybrid of innovative state ownership and tight political control? Or is the rapid growth the result of liberal economic and political reforms?

Geopolitics: A Guide To The Issues, Bert Chapman

Libraries Research Publications

Provides overview of how geography influences international relations and international politics including climate change, energy security, international economics, and international security.  Introduces key figures in geopolitics development as a discipline such as Alfred Thayer Mahan and Halford Mackinder, covers the geopolitical interests of individuals countries, describes disciplinary divisions within geopolitics, details international geopolitical crisis areas and provides maps of some of these areas, emphasizes geopolitics information resources, and stresses the critical importance of geography in studying international politics and security.

Chaebol And Korea's Industrial Finance, Murat Doral, Michael Patrono

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The Korean economy is based on a government led and export oriented growth model centered on business groups or conglomerates known as chaebols which have close relationships with the government. The government led growth model, also known as Guided or Managed Capitalism, relies on a government dominated, but privately owned, business sector. The private business sector is itself dominated by chaebols which are family owned or controlled business groups. These groups are supported by preferential relationships with the government. While the chaebol system was an important element of South Korea's early industrial growth, it ultimately had to be reformed. The …

A Two-Edged Sword: The Economy Cooperation Framework Agreement Between The Republic Of China And The People's Republic Of China, Chi-An Chou

Brigham Young University International Law & Management Review

No abstract provided.

A Clashing Viewpoint Concerning India: A Critique Of Goldman Sachs 2007 Report, Ashok K. Roy, Aniruddha Bagchi

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The centerpiece of the 2007 Report by Goldman Sachs is the prediction of India's phenomenal economic growth and power in the next few decades. In this article we critique the conceptual validity of that prognosis. In particular, we highlight several hard and soft infrastructure impediments to India's emergence as a major economic power.

Workers' Migration And Remittances In Bangladesh, Khawaja Mamun, Hiranya K. Nath

WCBT Faculty Publications

Bangladesh has sent more than 6.7 million workers to over 140 countries during a period of more than three decades since the mid-1970s. Most of these workers temporarily migrated to work in Middle East and Southeast Asia. This mass movement of temporary migrant workers has, to some extent, eased unemployment pressures on the over-burdened labor market in this highly populated country. More importantly, the remittance transfers received from these migrant workers have reached a phenomenal level of over 10 billion US dollars in 2009, approximately 12 percent of GDP in Bangladesh. This paper analyzes the trends and various other aspects …

How Does Foreign Direct Investment Affect Growth In Developing Countries? An Empirical Investigation, E. M. Ekanayake, John R. Ledgerwood

Publications

This paper analyzes the effects of foreign direct investment on the economic growth of developing countries. The study uses annual data on a group of 85 developing countries covering Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean for the period 1980-2007. We explore the hypothesis that foreign direct investment can promote growth in developing countries. We test this hypothesis using panel data series for foreign direct investment, while accounting for regional differences in Asian, African, Latin American, and the Caribbean countries as well as the differences in income levels. While the findings of previous studies are generally mixed, our results …

Tunneling Through Intercorporate Loans: The China Experience, Guohua Jiang, Charles M. C. Lee, Heng Yue

Research Collection School of Accountancy

This study investigates a particularly brazen form of corporate abuse, in which controlling shareholders use intercorporate loans to siphon billions of RMB from hundreds of Chinese listed companies during the 1996 to 2006 period. We document the nature and extent of these transactions, evaluate their economic consequences, examine factors that affect their cross-sectional severity, and report on the mitigating roles of auditors, institutional investors, and regulators. Collectively, our findings shed light on the severity of the minority shareholder expropriation problem in China, as well as the relative efficacy of various legal and extra-legal governance mechanisms in that country.

Monetary Policy And Asset Prices In A Small Open Economy: A Factor-Augmented Var Analysis For Singapore, Hwee Kwan Chow, Keen Meng Choy

Research Collection School Of Economics

The ongoing global financial turmoil has revived the question of whether central bankers ought to tighten monetary policy preemptively in order to head off asset price misalignments before a sudden crash triggers financial instability. This study explores the issue of the appropriate monetary policy response to asset price swings in the small open economy of Singapore. Empirical analysis of monetary policy based on standard VAR models, unfortunately, is often hindered by the use of sparse information sets. To better reflect the extensive information monitored by Singapore’s central bank, including global economic indicators, we augment a monetary VAR model with common …

Is There Country-Of-Origin Bias In The Video Game Market?, Keaton C. White

Economics Honors Projects

This paper tests for the existence of country-of-origin bias in the video game market. Using aggregate sales data from Japan and the US, I measure the effect of country-of-origin on video game sales in each respective country while controlling for genre, system, quality, and target age group, as well as domestically targeted games and superstar effects. I find that a significant country-of-origin bias exists in both game markets in favor of domestic titles.

How Does Vietnam's Accession To The World Trade Organization Change The Spatial Incidence Of Poverty?, Tomoki Fujii, David Roland-Holst

Research Collection School Of Economics

Trade liberalization is good for growth, and growth is good for the poor. This argument is simple but powerful. It has served as the departure point for discussion of the link between trade and poverty among economists and policy-makers, regardless of whether and to what extent they buy this argument. Krueger (1998) considers the inefficiencies that import substitution strategy creates and argues that trade liberalization undertaken at a period of low or negative growth rates can normally lead to a period of higher growth rates. Bhagwati and Srinivasan (2002) emphasize the empirical evidence of China and India. That is, these …

Japan And The World: Japan’S Contemporary Geopolitical Challenges – A Volume In Honor Of The Memory And Intellectual Legacy Of Asakawa Kan’Ichi, Frances Rosenbluth, Masaru Kohno

CEAS Occasional Publication Series

Yale CEAS Occasional Publication Series - Volume 2

The Development Drive Of North-South Versus South-South Ptas, Jose Luis Ramirez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The importance of PTAs in today's global economic order is unmistakable, especially during the last fifteen years when their proliferation has dramatically accelerated and their scope and structure have radically changed. However, the available theoretical framework (international trade theories) from which their developmental impact is assessed seems to be largely lagging behind. Hence, there is a crucial need for more realistic assessments of their embedded developmental features because an increasing number of developing countries are perceiving these agreements as one of the key instruments to propel their long delayed economic development. In this thesis, I strive to construct an alternative …

Modeling Country Risks: An Asian Perspective, Swee Liang Tan, G. K. Randolph Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the use of the Markov Regime Switching Model (MRSM) as a means to track changes in the levels of investor confidence. It also assesses the probabilities of a country switching between different regimes using the transition probability matrix. A maximum of three possible levels or regimes of risk – low, intermediate and high volatility regimes, is considered. From the smoothed probabilities calculated for different regimes, this paper makes inferences about timings of debt crisis. Comparing Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines and Indonesia in particular, we date the onset and subsequent dissolution of crisis-induced panic. We give interpretations of …

A Monetary Union In East Asia: What Does The Common Cycles Approach Tell?, K Sato, David E. Allen, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs pre 2011

There is controversy about whether a monetary union is feasible in the East Asian region. Amongst the criteria for establishing a monetary union, most of the existing studies focus on the symmetric issue of fundamental shocks and the extent of correlations by applying the Blanchard and Quah (1989) structural vector autoregression (VAR) technique, which includes the firstdifferenced variables in the model and examines only bilateral relationships. When forming a monetary union, the member countries need to renounce their monetary policy autonomy. If shocks to respective economies are symmetric, the cost of relinquishing the discretionary monetary policy is likely to be …

The Subtlety Of Political Risk With Foreign Direct Investment: The Case Of The Vietnamese Sugar Industry, Tom Arnold, Bonnie Buchanan, Janice Lo

Finance Faculty Publications

Political risk entails more than a host country taking advantage of investment from foreign sources. A more subtle form of political risk is attributable to the host government's mismanagement of policies that may be intended to attract foreign direct investment, but may have unintended consequences. A perfect example is the ''One Million Tonne Sugar Program " sponsored by the government of Vietnam during the mid-1990s. What appears to be a very lucrative investment for foreign investors becomes a financial disaster due to the inability of the government to allocate resources efficiently and police its borders from smugglers.

China's Changing Economic Structures And Its Implications For Regional Patterns Of Trade Production And Integration, Kim Song Tan, Hoe Ee Khor

Research Collection School Of Economics

There is tremendous momentum for economic and financial integration in East Asia today. Partly inspired by the formation of the European Union and partly as a response to the 1997/98 Asia financial crisis, many East Asian countries are showing greater commitment to regional economic cooperation. A number of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) have either been concluded or are being negotiated.1 At a less formal level, the ASEAN+3 grouping has brought the whole region together in regular consultations over trade, investment, as well as monetary and exchange rate policy matters.

The Creation And Economic Regulation Of Housing Markets: A Comparison Of The Experiences Of Singapore And Korea, Sock-Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Privatization, creation of markets and economic regulation are terms that few would immediately associate with the housing sector. Mainstream housing markets in most of the free market economies of the developed world are regarded as competitive markets, with little need for economic regulation of the market. Regulations that attempt to control behavior directly are generally limited to policies relating to rent control, the provision of rental housing or rental allowances for lower income groups, as well as land use regulations and building controls.

The housing sectors of Singapore and Korea are highly unusual in the extent of government involvement and …

The Empirical Relationship Between Exchange Rates And Interest Rates In Post-Crisis Asia, Hwee Kwan Chow, Yoonbai Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

In post-crisis Asia, all crisis-hit countries (except Malaysia) announced a shift from exchange rate based monetary policy framework to the explicit adoption of inflation targeting that uses interest rates as the key monetary policy operating instrument. In this study, we examine the empirical relationship between exchange rates and interest rates, and investigate how the dynamics between them have changed following the crisis. This is carried out by constructing a bivariate VAR-GARCH model for each of the four Asian crisis countries, namely Indonesia, Korea, Philippines and Thailand. The findings suggest these countries do not use interest rate policy more actively to …

Trade, Capital Accumulation And Structural Unemployment: An Empirical Study Of The Singapore Economy, Hiau Looi Kee, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the factors responsible for the secular decline of Singapore’s unemployment rate over the period 1966-2000 in an environment of low and stable inflation rates. We introduce wage bargaining and unions into a specific-factors, two-sector economy with an export sector and a non-tradable sector to obtain an endogenous natural unemployment rate. Increases in the relative export price and capital stock in the export sector are predicted to reduce structural unemployment. These hypotheses could not be rejected based on structural estimations and co-integration regressions. Empirically, capital accumulation in the export sector explains most of the decline in Singapore’s unemployment …

Why Is China So Competitive? Measuring And Explaining China's Competitiveness, F. Gerard Adams, Byron Gangnes, Yochanan Shachmurove

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper evaluates factors responsible for the competitiveness of China in the world economy and relative to its East Asian rivals. China has been highly successful in capturing world export markets. Chinese competitiveness is not just a matter of an undervalued exchange and extremely low labor costs. It reflects primarily the coincidence of favorable cost conditions with improvements in China’s ability to produce products that meet world market specifications. These improvements are closely related to foreign participation in China’s economy through foreign direct investment and joint venture enterprises.

Compatibility Of A Western Systemic Approach For Handling Complex, Pluralist And Coercive Problems In Developing Countries: A Case Study Of Micro Satellite Development In Indonesia, Alexander Sudibyo

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

In this era of globalization, there has been much western investment in the eastern world, increasing the number of large projects financed by internal and foreign investments. It was thought a challenging proposition to investigate whether systemic approaches could be used in eastern developing countries that are in transition between Toffler’s first (agricultural focused) and second (industrial centered) waves of economic development.

Markov Switching Garch Models Of Currency Crises In Southeast Asia, Celso Brunetti, Roberto S. Mariano, Chiara Scotti, Augustine H. H. Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper develops a model which is able to forecast exchange rate turmoil. Our starting point relies on the empirical evidence that exchange rate volatility is not constant. In fact, the modeling strategy adopted refers to the vast literature of the GARCH class of models, where the variance process is explicitly modeled. Further empirical evidence shows that it is possible to distinguish between two different regimes: îordinaryî versus îturbulenceî. Low exchange rate changes are associated with low volatility (ordinary regime) and high exchange rate devaluations go together with high volatility. This calls for a regime switching approach. In our model …

Review Of Japan's Economic Dilemma: The Institutional Origins Of Prosperity And Stagnation, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. $ 54.95 Hardcover, $ 19.95 Papercover. Bai Gao. Reviewed By Christian Aspalter., Christian Aspalter

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Book review of Bai Gao, Japan's Economic Dilemma: The Institutional Origins of Prosperity and Stagnation, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. $54.95 hardcover, $19.95 papercover.

Japanese Capitalism In Crisis: A Regulationist Interpretation (Book Review), Ramzi N. Frangul

WCBT Faculty Publications

Book review by Ramzi N. Frangul.

Boyer, R., & Yamada, T. (Eds.). (2000). Japanese capitalism in crisis: A regulationist interpretation. Routledge.

ISBN 9780415205597

Perkembangan Perdagangan, Perkapalan Dan Pelabuhan Di British Borneo, 1800-1963, Hanizah Idris

Student Works (2000-2009)

For the last two decades, there have been remarkably few works that have dealt with British Borneo as a whole. Over time, different works particularly on the political and anthropological aspects have been written on British Borneo but separately as an individual state. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the development of trade, shipping and ports that are also of major significance in the study of British Borneo. From 1800 to 1963, British Borneo had experienced tremendous changes in the development of trade, shipping and ports. As a resource based territory, it has attracted traders and entrepreneurs from other parts of …

Capitalizing On Market Reforms: Facets Of Legal Development In Contemporary China, Stefanie Elbern

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Law and Justice in China’s New Marketplace by Ronald C. Keith and Zhiqiu Lin. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 315pp.

and

Profits and Principles: Global Capitalism and Human Rights in China by Michael A. Santoro. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. 256pp.

The Reforms Of China's State Enterprises, The Bank System And The Relationship Between Them, Zheng Li

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

China's economic reform is now at a critical stage ofrestructuring the financial sector and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Although refonns have accomplished much over the past two decades, many problems still exist in these two sectors. Chinese banks and enterprises influence and interweave with each other. The banks can't operate fuJly as commercial banks until the principal borrowers are fully reformed. SOEs cannot become profitable unless the banking system is commercialized and stops making poHcy loans to the money-losing enterprises. How can China reform its banking system and SOEs to achieve sustained long-term growth? This study focuses on the reform of …