The Future of East Asia’s Trade: A Call for Better Globalization

This paper is about how East Asia should respond to the challenges of the external environment. The first challenge is the current slowdown in trade, which has been due to cyclical and structural factors such as the decline in productivity and the maturation of global value chains. The rise in protectionism as measured by rising trade restrictiveness has not impacted on trade, but political and policy uncertainty regarding the direction of trade policy seems to have begun to impact on trade growth. The policy stance of increased protectionism and a retreat from the multilateral rules‐based trading system is linked to the pockets of the population who have not seen their incomes improve and who have blamed their plight and increased inequality on globalization. In fact, the issue is more about the lack of effective responses to manage the costs of trade liberalization. East Asian economies need to respond to these challenges by upholding the multilateral rules‐based trading system, continuing the various pathways to regional economic integration, and ensuring better globalization through effective capacity building and policies to address the negative effects of trade liberalization.     

Globalization and financial development

This paper argues that globalization is a key factor in stimulating institutional reforms in developing countries that promote financial development and economic growth. Advanced countries can help in this process by supporting the opening of their markets to goods and services from emerging-market countries. By encouraging these countries to increase their participation in global markets, advanced countries can create exactly the right incentives for developing countries to implement the reforms that will enable them to have high economic growth.     

Causal Linkages among the Product Diversification of Exports,Economic Globalization and Economic Growth

This paper examines causal relationships between economic globalization, the three indices for product diversification of exports (Theil index, intensive margin and extensive margin) and economic growth in the unbalanced panel data framework in 139 countries over the period 1970–2010. We also consider the subgroup of the countries related to the income levels and run the panel Granger non‐causality tests for heterogeneous panels. The empirical results indicate that there is a bidirectional causal relationship between economic globalization and economic growth. There is also a significant causal relationship that runs from all three indices for the diversification of exports to economic growth. After implementing various robustness checks, we observe that diversification of exports and economic globalization are positively related with economic growth merely in the upper middle economies.     

Does financial globalization promote risk sharing?

In theory, one of the main benefits of financial globalization is that it should allow for more efficient international risk sharing. In this paper, we provide an empirical evaluation of the patterns of risk sharing among different groups of countries and examine how international financial integration has affected the evolution of these patterns. Using a variety of empirical techniques, we conclude that there is at best a modest degree of international risk sharing, and certainly nowhere near the levels predicted by theory. In addition, only industrial countries have attained better risk sharing outcomes during the recent period of globalization. Developing countries have, by and large, been shut out of this benefit. Even emerging market economies, many of which have reduced capital controls and all of which have witnessed large increases in cross-border capital flows, have seen little change in their ability to share risk. We find that the composition of flows may help explain why emerging markets have not been able to realize this presumed benefit of financial globalization. In particular, our results suggest that portfolio debt, which had dominated the external liability stocks of most emerging markets until recently, is not conducive to risk sharing.     

The dynamics of financial development,globalisation, economic growth and life expectancy in sub‐Saharan Africa

The importance of life expectancy is recognised in the development economics literature because of its increasing effects on labour productivity and economic growth in long‐run. However, no published study to date empirically examines the nonlinear relationships between globalisation, financial development, economic growth and life expectancy in sub‐Saharan African (SSA) countries. Therefore, our study intends to fill this gap by using non‐parametric cointegration test and multivariate Granger causality test towards a non‐linear empirical understanding of the factors affecting the life expectancy. We consider the case of 16 sub‐Saharan African economies using annual data over the period 1970–2012. The empirical analysis indicates that financial development, globalisation and economic growth appear to have a positive impact upon life expectancy in sub‐Saharan African economies, except for Gabon and Togo. Our empirical findings may provide insightful policy implications towards improving population health conditions which are vital for promoting the productivity of labour force and long‐run economic growth in sub‐Saharan African countries. In light of these policy implications, governments should incorporate globalisation, financial development and economic growth as key economic instruments in formulating sustainable developmental policy to promote life expectancy for the people in sub‐Saharan African countries.     

Globalization and the Inequality–Unemployment Tradeoff

Over the last 20 years, advanced economies have experienced an “unemployment versus inequality” tradeoff that is critically uneven across countries. To explain this, we propose an extended HOS model in which: the factors are skilled and unskilled labor; there is a continuum of goods; the world comprises two North countries (one egalitarian and one nonegalitarian) and the South; there is no factor price equalization; globalization consists in the South cornering a growing share of world production. In the North, globalization entails an inequality–unemployment tradeoff and the adjustment to globalization is more painful for the country that was initially inequality‐oriented.     

Thresholds in finance–growth nexus: Evidence from G‐7 economies

This study explores the finance and economic growth nexus in G‐7 economies as these countries experience significantly higher levels of financial development. Using a balanced panel of 31 years from 1983 to 2013, we provide new evidence on the finance–growth relationship. We show the presence of nonlinearity as there is an inverted U‐shaped relationship between finance and growth in the long run. Estimating the thresholds in the finance–growth nexus, we notice that there exists a threshold effect of finance at 109% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We observe that exceeding the threshold would hinder the countries instead of furthering economic growth as too much finance is harmful. Based on the panel Granger causality test results, we claim that financial development should be associated with optimal growth performance. Our findings for the G‐7 economies offer some useful policy inferences to the emerging and developing economies in designing their financial development strategies.     

Financial Trilemma in China and a Comparative Analysis with India

A key challenge facing most emerging market economies today is how to simultaneously maintain monetary independence, exchange rate stability and financial integration subject to the constraints imposed by the trilemma, in an era of widespread globalization. In this paper we review and contrast the trilemma policy choices and trade‐offs faced by the two key drivers of global economic growth: China and India. China's trilemma configurations are unique relative to other emerging markets in terms of the predominance of exchange rate stability, and in the failure of the trilemma regression to capture a consistently significant role for financial integration. In contrast, the trilemma configurations of India are in line with choices made by other emerging countries. Over time, India, like other emerging economies, has converged towards a middle ground among the three policy objectives, and has achieved comparable levels of exchange rate stability and financial integration buffered by sizeable international reserves.     

OPTIMAL FOREIGN BORROWING REVISITED

Foreign capital has become increasingly important in financing investment and growth in developing countries. Foreign capital flows, however, can be volatile as is evident from the recent financial crises. It has also recently been noted by researchers that there is little systematic empirical evidence that foreign capital contributes to the economic growth of developing countries. In this context, this paper attempts to theoretically reevaluate the borrowing behaviour of a developing economy that relies on foreign borrowing for its capital formation. In particular, this paper investigates the implications of different lending policies of international financial institutions. It is found that no matter whether the borrowing interest rate increases with the level of foreign debt per capita or with the foreign‐capital/total‐capital ratio, the economy always moves toward the stationary state. The result holds even when the representative agent regards the interest rate given as constant. This implies that foreign borrowing does help economic growth, irrespective of lending policies of international financial institutions.     

Macroeconomic determinants of the credit risk in the banking system: The case of the GIPSI

In this paper, we analyze the link between the macroeconomic developments and the banking credit risk in a particular group of countries – Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy (GIPSI) – recently affected by unfavourable economic and financial conditions.Employing dynamic panel data approaches to these five countries over the period 1997q1–2011q3, we conclude that the banking credit risk is significantly affected by the macroeconomic environment: the credit risk increases when GDP growth and the share and housing price indices decrease and rises when the unemployment rate, interest rate, and credit growth increase; it is also positively affected by an appreciation of the real exchange rate; moreover, we observe a substantial increase in the credit risk during the recent financial crisis period. Several robustness tests with different estimators have also confirmed these results.The findings of this paper indicate that all policy measures that can be implemented to promote growth, employment, productivity and competitiveness and to reduce external and public debt in these countries are fundamental to stabilize their economies.     

ASIAN BUSINESS CYCLE SYNCHRONIZATION

This paper develops a multilevel structural factor model to study international output comovement and its underlying driving forces. Our method combines a structural vector autoregression with a multilevel factor model, which helps us understand the economic meaning of the estimated factors. Using quarterly data of real GDP growth covering 9 emerging Asian economies and G‐7 countries, we estimate a global supply factor, a global demand factor, and group supply and demand factors for each group of the economies. We find that although the role of the global factors has intensified over the past 15 years for most of the economies, output fluctuations in Asia have remained less synchronized with the global factor than those in the industrial countries. The Asian regional factors have become increasingly important in tightening the interdependence within the region over time. Therefore, although emerging Asian economies cannot ‘decouple’ completely from the advanced economies, they have, nonetheless, sustained a strong independent cycle among themselves. We also find that synchronized supply shocks contributed more to the observed synchronization in output fluctuations among the Asian economies than demand shocks. This points to the role of productivity enhancement and transmission of other supply shocks through, for example, vertical trade integration, rather than dependence on external demand, as the primary source of business cycle synchronization in emerging Asia.     

International risk sharing during the globalization era

Abstract. Though financial globalization should improve international risk sharing, empirical support is lacking. We develop a simple welfare‐based measure that captures how far countries are from the ideal of perfect risk sharing. Applying it to data, we find some evidence that international risk sharing has improved during globalization. Improved risk sharing comes mostly from the convergence in rates of consumption growth among countries rather than from synchronization of consumption at the business cycle frequency.     

How strong is the causal relationship between globalization and energy consumption in developed economies? A country-specific time-series and panel analysis

We examine the causal relationship between globalization, economic growth and energy consumption for 25 developed economies using both time series and panel data techniques for the period 1970–2014. Due to the presence of cross-sectional dependence in the panel (countries from Asia, North America, Western Europe and Oceania), we employ the cross-sectional augmented IPS test to ascertain unit root properties. The cointegration test results indicate the presence of a long-run association between globalization, economic growth and energy consumption. Long-run heterogeneous panel elasticities are estimated through the common correlated effects mean group estimator and the augmented mean group estimator. The empirical results reveal that, for most countries, globalization increases energy consumption. In the USA and UK, globalization is negatively correlated with energy consumption. The causality analysis indicates the presence of the globalization-driven energy consumption hypothesis. This empirical analysis suggests insightful policy guidelines for policy makers using globalization as an economic tool to utilize energy efficiently for sustainable economic development in the long run.     

Energy exports,globalization and economic growth: The case of South Caucasus

We examine the effect of energy exports and globalization on economic growth using the bias-corrected least square dummy variable model in a panel of five South Caucasus countries (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Russia and Turkey) over the period of 1990–2009. We provide evidence that higher energy exports and globalization expand economic growth. Also, we find that higher economic, political and social integrations are associated with higher growth rates. Furthermore, we find that greater energy exports contribute to higher growth rates in the course of globalization. In particular, higher energy exports lead to higher growth rates in the period of increasing economic and political integration. We therefore emphasize that energy exports, global integration, and their interaction effects are important determinants of economic growth in the South Caucasus region.     

BRETTON WOODS - ORIGINAL INTENTIONS AND CURRENT PROBLEMS

The Bretton Woods institutions have been subjected to a variety of criticisms in recent years and have been faced with severe problems in carrying out their objectives. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have not performed in accordance with the original intentions of their founders. As shown in this article, this is in large measure because the world economic environment has been quite different from that envisaged by the participants in the Bretton Woods conference. Many of the original intended functions for these institutions are no longer relevant. This article examines the current problems facing the IMF and World Bank, with special attention to how they are related to the original intentions. For example, in recent years, a major problem has been the financial crises of member countries that have liberalized their economies in line with trends toward globalization. These crises have resulted in demands on the IMF and World Bank for financial assistance for purposes other than those for which their assistance was originally designed. Other problems of the two institutions include providing assistance to the world's poorest countries that have made virtually no development progress in recent years, and assisting the former communist countries in transition to market economies. The author gives his personal views on how these and other problems of the IMF and World Bank should be dealt with.     

Financial Crisis, “New” Industrial Policy,and the Bite of Multilateral Trade Rules

The recent Great Recession has triggered substantial government intervention – not all of it macroeconomic. This article presents evidence that the sectoral incidence and forms of government intervention appear to have changed from pre-crisis regularities. Once the commercial significance of a sector is taken into account, pre-crisis measures of trade policy intervention poorly predict the crisis-era sectoral incidence of discriminatory state measures imposed by Asian governments. Qualitative evidence focusing on three key countries in Asia – China, Japan, and South Korea – is also marshaled to sustain the contention that Asian governments have used the recent economic crisis to reinvigorate industrial policies, targeting apparent growth poles and apparently environmentally friendly technologies and sectors. Implications for the expansion of World Trade Organization rules and their effectiveness are discussed.     

Trade, regulations, and income

We examine the relationship between openness and per-capita income using cross-country data from 126 countries. We find that trade leads to a higher standard of living in flexible economies, but not in rigid economies. Business regulation, especially on firm entry, is more important than financial development, higher education, or rule of law as a complementary policy to trade liberalization. Specifically, after controlling for the standard determinants of per-capita income, our results imply that a 1% increase in trade is associated with more than a one-half percent rise in per-capita income in economies that facilitate firm entry, but has no positive income effects in more rigid economies. The findings are consistent with Schumpeterian “creative destruction”, which highlights the importance of new business entry in economic performance, and with previous firm-level studies showing that the beneficial effects of trade liberalization come largely from an intra-sectoral reallocation of resources.     

International and Regional Cooperation: Asia's Role and Responsibilities

Asia has emerged from the global financial crisis as an important stabilizing force and an engine of global economic growth. The establishment of the G-20 gives Asian economies the global forum that they need to both represent their interests in global governance and deliver on responsibilities concomitant with their growing weight in the global economy. The region has a host of cooperation arrangements in APEC, ASEAN+3, and EAS (East Asian Summit), all with ASEAN as the fulcrum. They are huge assets, but they need to be repositioned to relate effectively to the G-20 process and other global arrangements. They also need to comprehend the politics of the changing structure of regional power. This paper discusses the challenges that Asia faces in aligning regional and global objectives in financial, trade, and other areas of cooperation, such as climate change and foreign investment. It argues that Asia is now a critical player in the global system and has a central contribution to make in strengthening global governance and international policy outcomes. The paper sets out ways to fill gaps in regional cooperation and link the agenda for regional cooperation more effectively to Asia's new role globally. This is essential to sustain Asia's superior growth performance, correct imbalances, and support the global economic system.     

Walrasian General Equilibrium Allocations and Dynamics in Two-Sector Growth Models

This paper analyzes and solves miniature Walrasian general equilibrium systems of momentary and moving equilibria. The Walrasian framework encompasses the fundamental neoclassical and classical two‐sector growth models; the families of solutions of steady‐state and persistent growth per capita in various competitive two‐sector economies are parametrically characterized. Moreover, the endogenous behavior of relative prices and the sectoral allocation of primary factors are analyzed in detail. The technology parameters of the capital good industry are decisive for obtaining long‐run per capita growth in closed (global) economies. A review of the literature complements the theorems on the general equilibrium allocations, dynamic systems, and the time paths of Walrasian two‐sector economies.     

The role of China in the world economy: evidence from a global VAR model

Since the 1980s, China has experienced very high economic growth, and its share in global trade has increased rapidly. Currently, however, the Chinese economy is rebalancing, and its growth is slowing. This paper investigates the spillover effects on other countries of a negative demand shock and negative stock price shock in the Chinese economy. We apply a global vector autoregressive model, which enables us to model international linkages between countries. Our results show that a one per cent negative China GDP shock reduces global growth by 0.22% in the short run. We find that GDP shock affects emerging economies more strongly than advanced economies. We also show that a stock price shock affects only emerging economies and does not affect advanced economies.