Poverty and Inequality in The Soeharto Era: An Assessment

This paper surveys the evidence on trends in poverty and inequality during the years of Soeharto's presidency. That Indonesia saw a decline in the incidence of poverty, and improvements in other welfare indicators such as infant mortality rates and literacy rates over these years, seems indisputable. Comparative studies show that by the latter part of the 1980s, the headcount measure of poverty in Indonesia was below that in the Philippines although above that in Malaysia and Thailand. But relative poverty has declined more slowly, and indeed increased in some urban areas between 1987 and 1996. The paper also examines evidence on the determinants of rural poverty in Indonesia in 1993, and suggests that rural development programs targeted to the specific needs of poor people in poor areas will be essential if rural poverty is to be further reduced in future years.     

Water Resources in the Asia-Pacific Region: Managing Scarcity

Irrigation, together with improved crop varieties and substantial growth in fertiliser use in the late 1960s through the early 1980s, was a key factor in stimulating strong agricultural growth in much of the Asia-Pacific region. New sources of water are increasingly expensive to exploit, but irrigation continues to be a major catalyst for agricultural growth. In the face of increasing degradation, the maintenance of the water resource base must be a high priority policy objective. This paper reviews the management of water resources in the Asia-Pacific region, for countries with significant irrigated area: Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Korea-DPR, Republic of Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.     

Poverty incidence and economic growth in Southeast Asia

The countries of Southeast Asia have achieved very large reductions in absolute poverty incidence over recent decades. This paper examines the relationship between this accomplishment and the rate of economic growth. It develops a time series of available data on the headcount measure of poverty incidence for Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines over the period from the 1960s to 1999, in aggregate and in both rural and urban areas. It then uses this pooled data set to analyze the economic determinants of poverty incidence, the impact of the 1997 economic crisis and the degree to which poverty will be affected by alternative hypothetical recovery paths.     

An evaluation of the saving,investment, and current account balances of five ASEAN economies

This paper evaluates the saving, investment and current account balances (CABs) of five ASEAN economies: Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines over the period 1976 to 1997. The method is to apply a calibrated representative agent model of optimal saving and investment to each of these economies. The model generates optimal saving, investment and CABs for each year from 1976 to 1997 and these are compared with the actual balances. The results suggest that three of the ASEAN countries—Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand—had below-optimal current account ratios (to GDP) on average over the period 1976 to 1997, for most reasonable values of parameters. This was the result of over-investment for Malaysia and Thailand and under-saving by the Philippines. For Singapore and, to a lesser extent Indonesia, the reverse applies—their current account ratios were above-optimal on average due to over-saving.     

Exchange Rates and Economic Recovery in the 1930s: An Extension to Asia

Scholars have found a positive relationship between the magnitude of currency depreciation and the extent of recovery from the Great Depression for Europe and Latin America. The relationship between currency depreciation and economic activity during the Great Depression for Asian economies has not yet been explored. This paper examines this topic using data from 13 Asian economies: China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam. We find that Asian economies responded in a similar way to currency depreciation during the Great Depression as did European and Latin American countries.     

The relationship between globalization and insurance activities: A panel data analysis

This study applies a Bootstrap Panel Granger causality test to investigate whether there is causal relationship between globalization and insurance activity. We examine data from sigma reports of Swiss Reinsurance Company for 8 Eastern Asian countries over the period of 1979–2008. Empirically, results for one-way Granger causality show the influence of total insurance activity, life insurance activity, and non-life insurance activity on globalization only in Korea. However, there is strong causality from globalization to insurance activity for Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. In our research, the results show that the causality between globalization and insurance activity varies across countries with different conditions. The findings of this study could provide important policy implications for the 8 Eastern Asian countries under study, namely India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand.     

Bank lending and the business cycle: Does ownership matter in ASEAN countries?

We analyze the lending cyclicality of 213 ASEAN commercial banks over the period 2001–2015. The findings indicate that lending by private banks is procyclical while lending by state banks is countercyclical. Long-term liabilities also move countercyclically for state banks whereas funding for non-state banks in the form of deposit and long-term liabilities is procyclical. Greater lending cyclicality is observed for both private and state banks in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam (CMLV) compared to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore (ASEAN-5). Lending of non-ASEAN based foreign banks shows greater procyclicality than that of domestic banks for the ASEAN-5 countries, although not for the CMLV countries. During the global financial crisis, lending by non-ASEAN based foreign banks contracted sharply even as lending by ASEAN based foreign banks was unaffected. Overall, our results confirm that bank ownership influences lending and funding sensitivity to economic fluctuations.     

Income Distribution in East Asian Developing Countries: an update

This paper portrays recent trends in income distribution in eight countries of the developing East and Southeast Asian region. The available data indicate that the distribution of income in the more developed Asian NIEs, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, has tended to become more unequal in recent years. The ASEAN-4 countries offer an interesting contrast. With the exception of Thailand, the distributions of income in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines have shown a trend towards greater equality. The experiences of the East Asian developing countries have demonstrated that sustained GDP growth with full employment could be a most favourable factor explaining the reduction of inequality.     

Bank market power and revenue diversification: Evidence from selected ASEAN countries

This paper examines the association between bank market power and revenue diversification using a sample of 153 commercial banks from five Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). We find a non-linear relationship between bank market power and revenue diversification, where at lower degrees of market power (in loan and deposit markets) banks concentrate on revenue diversification. In contrast, those with greater market power focus more on traditional interest-based products. Our findings also indicate that credit losses experienced earlier, during and after the Asian financial crisis have encouraged ASEAN banks to diversify into non-traditional activities to compensate for their excessive losses. When the markets recovered and loan demand increased, however, traditional interest-based business has become more important. These results remain consistent across all models providing robust results.     

Differentials in urban-rural fertility in the countries of the ESCAP region

Fertility differentials between rural and urban populations are investigated using World Fertility Survey data for Bangladesh, Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. "The fertility measure used in this analysis is the number of children ever born to a woman. An attempt is made first to establish the differential in fertility levels between urban and rural areas after necessary control of the demographic factors..., and then the possible explanation of the differential is sought in terms of socio-economic variables such as education of the respondent, and occupation, work pattern, work status and place of work of the respondent as well as that of the husband." Data concerning the fertility differentials and the associated explanatory variables are presented in tables and charts. "The results tend to show that the countries of Asia are undergoing similar patterns of fertility transition as was experienced in the advanced countries. Perhaps one can graduate the countries in the transition scale as follows: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan and Malaysia are in the initial stage; Fiji, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand are in the middle stage of transition."     

The Asian Automotive Industry: Assessing the Roles of State and Market in the Age of Global Competition

In the 1970s, automotive industries in developing economies were rebuked for their failure to set in motion the technological learning and industrial externalities that justified state promotion. However, in the 1990s, a number of Asian automotive industries throve with the rapid growth of their host economies. This paper assesses the current state and prospects of automotive industries in selected Asian countries with state-sponsored development programs—South Korea, Taiwan, China and India—and the ASEAN economies—Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. To date, Korea is the only developing economy in Asia with an indigenous auto-manufacturing base capable of competing in the international market. Given developments in the world industry, the catch-up task for other countries in the region will be more difficult.     

State Power and Private Profit: the political economy of corruption in Southeast Asia

This article reviews the extensive political and economic literature since 1990 on corruption in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. After considering each country's individual recent history of corruption, the article comparatively analyses the relationship of corruption in these countries with, respectively, the roles of the state, the private sector and external actors, democratisation and decentralisation, and the impact of corruption on economic growth and inequality. Our conclusion is that while economic liberalisation, democratisation and centralisation of state power influence the forms of corruption and its impact on national economic performance, they are neither necessary nor sufficient for its decline.     

Contagion in the stock markets: The Asian financial crisis revisited

This paper presents empirical evidence of herding contagion in the stock markets during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, above and beyond macroeconomic fundamental driven co-movements. We analyze the cross-country time-varying correlation coefficients among the stock prices for the countries of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, and the Philippines, between crisis and tranquil periods. Macromodels are constructed and implemented to capture the pure contagion effects on the markets. After controlling for the economic fundamentals for the five countries, the paper finds strong evidence of herding contagion.     

Exchange rates,price levels,and inflation targeting: Evidence from Asian countries

This study examines how the adoption of inflation-targeting influenced exchange rate pass-through and volatility in four Asian countries –Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand – over the sample period of January 1990 to June 2007. We find that adopting inflation targeting helped reduce pass-through in South Korea, and Thailand, while the results are less clear for Indonesia and the Philippines. Nevertheless, the findings indicate that inflation targeting caused a decline in exchange rate volatility in all four countries. The important lesson from the experiences of these Asian countries is that the adoption of inflation targeting contributes to achieving the ultimate goal of inflation stability through reducing exchange rate pass-through or variability.     

外资企业选址与企业生产率

本文利用Grossman-Helpman-Szeidl（2006）模型研究了外资企业在发展中国家内部的选址决策,模型表明：效率高的企业偏向选址于固定成本高可变成本低的地方,效率低的企业偏向选址于固定成本低可变成本高的地方。同时各个地区的效率空间会被运输成本所压缩。由于中国东部、中西部与东南亚国家之间劳动力工资以及固定投资成本的结构差异,高效率的企业会选址于印尼、菲律宾、越南三国,效率处于中间的企业会选址于中国中西部以及中国东部,效率最低的企业会选址于马来西亚、泰国两国。随后本文用2004-2013年Bvd亚太企业母公司层面面板数据验证了企业因效率不同而导致的选址差异。最后本文分析了双边自由贸易区对企业选址的效率空间的影响,研究表明双边自由贸易区对中国中西部的影响大于对中国东部的影响。     

Monetary policy shocks and exchange rates in Asian countries

In this paper, we empirically investigate the effects of monetary policy shocks on exchange rates in Asian countries. To do so, we use VAR models which impose sign restrictions on impulse responses to identify monetary policy shocks. We find that contractionary monetary policy shocks lead to significant exchange rate appreciation in Malaysia, the People’s Republic of China, and the Republic of Korea. However, in India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, we find either a significant depreciation or no significant effect. These results suggest that an interest rate increase (or decrease) may not necessarily shield Asian countries from exchange rate depreciation (or appreciation) pressure following a U.S. interest rate increase (or decrease).     

TAX REFORMS IN EAST ASIAN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: Motivations, directions, and implications

This first presents an overview of the level and structure of taxation in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. It then briefly reviews the available literature on tax reform, country by country. It finally gives a comparative analysis, focusing primarily on tax mix and tax structure, and the importance attached to tax administration.     

经济周期波动中的东南亚利率政策

2008年的全球性金融危机对东南亚消费、投资和出口形成冲击,东南亚经济渐入萧条通道,印尼、马来西亚、菲律宾、泰国先后推出经济刺激计划,实施降低利率的扩张性货币政策。2010年之后,东南亚经济复苏之势明显,但复苏的持续性受对外出口、政府需求可替代性因素的影响,东南亚连续加息旨在抑制物价上涨,防止低利率可能引发的经济泡沫化。     

Trade effects of foreign direct investment: Evidence for Taiwan with four ASEAN countries

Trade Effects of Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence for Taiwan with Four ASEAN Countries. —This paper examines the trade effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) between Taiwan and each of the following four ASEAN countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Regression results show that Taiwan's outward FDI has a significant positive effect on exports to and imports from the host country, whereas no such effects were consistently found for inward FDI from the same country.     

Foreign Exchange Market Contagion in the Asian Crisis: A Regression-Based Approach

This paper investigates whether, during the Asian crisis, contagion occurred from Thailand to the other crisis countries through the foreign exchange market, and, if so, determines the contribution of this contagion to the crisis. More specifically, we examine whether the effect of the exchange market pressure (EMP) of Thailand, the origin of the crisis, on the EMP of four Asian crisis countries increased during the crisis. Instead of measuring contagion by the commonly used correlation coefficients, we apply regression analysis. To control for the impact of macroeconomic fundamentals, we construct a time-varying indicator measuring the fragility of each economy. Additionally, we control for spillovers and common external shocks. We find evidence of contagion from Thailand to Indonesia and Malaysia, with 13 and 21 percent of the pressure on the respective currencies attributable to that contagion. For Korea and the Philippines there is no evidence of contagion from Thailand. JEL no. F30, F31, G15