Patterns of industrialization and the flying geese model: the case of electronics in East Asia

We use the “flying geese” framework to study the change in the geography of comparative advantages in the electronics sector in East Asia, China and the USA. Doubts have been raised about the capacity of the “flying geese” model to interpret the most recent phases of Asian development, in particular as far as progress in the electronics sector is concerned. This paper takes issue against these negative conclusions on both theoretical and empirical grounds. On the theoretical side, the paper takes up the formulation proposed by Kaname Akamatsu, arguing that some of the critical observations raised against the model look to a distorted and simplified version of Akamatsu's original theory. Analyzing the behavior of the “revealed comparative advantage index” per products and area, it is concluded that the “flying geese model” is compatible with manifold industrial development models, increasing interdependence in an integrated area which crucially also includes the US, and that asymmetries and hierarchical order persist across the countries.     

The “flying geese” model of Asian economic development: origin, theoretical extensions, and regional policy implications

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the “flying geese” (FG) model, which recently has become well known as a way of explaining rapid economic growth in East Asia. Kaname Akamatsu’s 1930s work introduced the concept. Through statistical analysis of industrial development in pre-war Japan, this author followed Akamatsu in developing a theoretical model called Kojima Model I. Subsequent works produced Kojima Models II and III.The regional transmission of FG industrialization has been noted as an engine of Asian economic growth, due in part to Saburo Okita’s forceful presentation of the theme of the FG model in a 1985 lecture. It is hoped that this paper will help to advance a better understanding of the FG model, its historical origin, its theoretical extensions, and its relevancy, as well as its incompleteness as a model of economic development.     

The “hidden” side of the “flying-geese” catch-up model: Japan’s dirigiste institutional setup and a deepening financial morass

Akamatsu’s original “flying geese” (FG) growth model is often used as a frame of reference for both further conceptual elaborations and empirical explorations. So far, only the positive results of FG development have been focused on and emphasized in connection with Asia’s phenomenal growth in the precrisis period. The Japanese economy, supposedly Asia’s lead goose, is in the eleventh consecutive year of stagnation. How has such a once successful lead goose come to be stricken by financial woes? This paper points out that Japan’s once miraculous FG growth was made possible because it established an effective dirigiste catch-up regime in the early postwar period but that Japan’s present financial predicament is paradoxically a path-dependent outcome of this FG strategy. The institutional, especially financial, dimension of FG strategy needs to be taken into account to explain why such a strategy once proved effective but later culminated in a deepening financial morass. The FG model should encompass not only the industrial dimension of catch-up but also its institutional, particularly financial, dimension.     

The roots of today's “women's jobs” and “men's jobs”: Using the index of dissimilarity to measure occupational segregation by gender

Looked at broadly, occupational distributions by sex in the United States have changed remarkably little since 1900; accordingly, researchers have found a slow rate of decline in the index of dissimilarity (a measure of occupational segregation by gender), estimates of which have so far been confined to the 20th century. This paper analyzes trends in the index over the latter part of the 19th century. The results indicate that during this period, industrialization and the associated changes in the nature of the business enterprise resulted in a rapid declinne in occupational segregation by gender, as measured by the index. This decline occurs earliest in cities experiencing early industrialization. Index estimates are presented for the United States and for selected midwestern cities, and changes in the index are decomposed into occupational mix effects and sex composition effects. Occupation-specific index changes are used to identify which occupations influenced changes in the overall index. The results indicate that the dynamic occupational shifts of the 19th century set the stage for the “men's jobs” and “women's jobs” that have been so persistently stable in the 20th century.     

From New Order to Regional Autonomy: Shifting Dynamics of “Illegal” Logging in Kalimantan, Indonesia

In recent years there has been a tendency to view the seemingly irremediable spread of “illegal” logging in Indonesia in isolation, or as a result of disassociated and premeditated criminal acts. This paper proposes a different view of the problem by discussing the changing dynamics of the “illegal” logging sector in the two districts of Berau, East Kalimantan and Kotawaringin Timur, Central Kalimantan. It suggests that “illegal” logging is not a simple case of criminality, but a complex economic and political system involving multiple stakeholders. Furthermore, “illegal” logging is not a stationary condition that can be effectively dealt with through coercive or repressive measures alone. Rather, it should be viewed as a dynamic and changing system deeply engrained in the realities of rural life in Indonesia. Regional autonomy has also created a supportive environment for the “illegal” logging trade and allowed it to gain resilience.     

The “North-South” controversy and Britain's regional problems

The extent of regional economic disparities in Britain has recently become the focus of considerable controversy. Attempts have been made to portray the existing situation in terms of a “North-South divide” or as “two nations”. Opponents of this point of view have argued that no such stark division of the country exists, and that prosperous areas can be found in parts of the North just as depressed areas can be found in parts of the South.

This paper considers the pattern of regional disparities which now prevails in Britain. Section I is a detailed presentation of the existing situation. Section II considers the question of how sharp a division there now is between different parts of Britain, followed, in Section III, by a discussion of the process of change which has brought about the regional disparities which we now observe. Implications for government policy are then considered.     

Europe and East Asia in the context of regionalization: Theory and economic policy

Much academic interest has recently centered on economic regionalism as a framework of international economic relations. The European Community (EC) has been a focal point. Other regional economic organizations (APEC, NAFTA), have been subjects of debate.This paper discusses three principal arguments: (1) the “natural”/“optimal” regional grouping, (2) transaction cost advantage in a regional model, and (3) the balancing of intraregional and extra-regional economies. Indeed, the argument is most certainly for an international regime of an “open,” not a “fortress” economic regionalism.This paper examines the subject relative to economic theory and policy.     

“Imaginary” or “Real” Moneys of Account in Medieval Europe? An Econometric Analysis of the Basle Pound, 1365–1429

During the Middle Ages, the medium of exchange function of money was separate from the unit of account function. This has given rise to the misconception that the medieval pound was an “abstract” or “imaginary” unit of account whose purchasing power was independent of that of gold and silver coins. The joint behavior of the pound price of gold, the pound price of silver, and the silver–gold ratio in Basle between 1365 and 1429 cannot be reconciled with the notion that nominal values were autonomous. Instead, the monetary system was based on a silver standard, supplemented by gold coins whose money of account values were determined by this silver standard.     

It is time to start “Rethinking Socialist Economics”

For the next few years, economic and employment policies will be dominated by the Conservative Government's programme. However, the debate on “alternative” policies should not be allowed to die. This review suggests that the issues raised by “Rethinking Socialist Economics” deserves serious attention.     

Japanese FDI into U.S. service industries: Exchange rate changes and services tradability

Using the implications of the model of investment under uncertainty, this paper provides a systematic examination of the FDI–exchange rate relationship with respect to services taking into account the degree of tradability across services. Services have mainly been addressed in the literature as a sensitivity test by industry using aggregated service data identified as “nonmanufacturing”. Using data on Japanese FDI into 207 U.S. service industries, maximium-likehood estimates reveal that dollar appreciations are positively correlated with service FDI flows into the U.S. This positive correlation is stronger for non-tradable services versus tradable services. For tradable and non-tradable producer services, higher exchange rate uncertainty may lead to fewer FDI occurrences. On average, across all types of services, higher U.S. unit labor costs relative to Japan had a deterrent effect on Japanese service FDI as well. Finally, this paper also provides a useful benchmark to partition services by tradability.     

Stability and Growth Pact: issues and lessons from political economy

The paper analyses the EU fiscal rules from a political economy perspective and derives some policy lessons. Following a literature survey, the paper stresses the importance of appropriate incentives for rule compliance in an environment where national fiscal sovereignty precludes the option of centralised enforcement. In addition, the paper stresses the importance of clear and simple rules and in particular the 3% deficit limit in anchoring expectations of fiscal discipline and facilitating public and market monitoring of public finances. This, in turn, strengthens incentive for rule compliance. Moreover, the paper discusses the interests of the most important players in European fiscal rule formation and the importance of choosing the appropriate time for initiating a reform debate.Non-technical summary The EU fiscal framework as laid down in the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP, the Pact) aims to preserve fiscal sustainability while allowing room for automatic fiscal stabilisation. These two objectives are also at the heart of the ECB’s interest in the EU fiscal framework because their attainment facilitates monetary policy making in the short and long run.The paper analyses the EU fiscal rules from a political economy perspective and derives some policy lessons. The literature review of the first part reveals that fiscal rules can help solve deficit/debt biases and time inconsistency problems by constraining the behavior of policy makers. But rules can also mitigate biases if they facilitate financial market and public scrutiny of fiscal policies.Thereafter, the paper analyses the institutional environment in which EU fiscal rules are applied. It argues that EU rules reflect a “contract” amongst countries that retain sovereignty on fiscal policies. Enforcement, therefore, ultimately has to be undertaken by the contracting parties. Due to this constraint, the rules can also be characterised as “soft” law (with the 3% limit being nevertheless a much “harder” constraint than the other elements). But this does not necessarily imply that the rules are ineffective (or “dead”). Soft law reduces political transaction costs (by improving transparency and providing a forum for peer pressure). Moreover, if well-designed, such law can boost incentives towards making the rules “self-enforcing”. Evidence speaks in favour of this view: while EU fiscal rules were bent in a number of cases and compliance is undeniably of concern, major and rapid fiscal balance deteriorations have been largely prevented since the start of EMU.The paper also looks at potential trade-offs between “complex” rules where a “fine-tuned” economic rationale may boost acceptance of the rules versus simple and clear rules that allow easy monitoring. It is argued that clarity and simplicity of rules are important especially when formal enforcement is limited (“soft law”) and public monitoring becomes more important. By facilitating public and market monitoring of compliance, clear and simple rules are also more costly to breach.The benefits of “complexity”, and in particular the use of administrative discretion to fine tune the rules to country situations have limits, in particular when it comes to the excessive deficit procedure (EDP). It is argued that the 3% deficit limit and the time frame for correcting excessive deficits already provide some room to accommodate economic circumstances. The 3% limit must be clear, simple and strictly implemented to anchor expectations of fiscal discipline and to facilitate public and market monitoring. Further discretion and relaxation would conflict with this need. From this angle, other risks (e.g., efforts not materializing, structural reforms producing surprise costs etc) are hard to justify as a reason for extending deadlines to correct excessive deficits.The preventive arm of the Pact with its requirement of close-to-balance-or-in-surplus budgetary positions defines sound medium term budget positions and adjustment paths. This may be appropriately fine-tuned to address concerns about the Pact’s underlying economic rationale. For example, a symmetric application in good and bad times and less time inconsistency would be desirable.Finally, the timing of a debate on fiscal rules needs to be carefully chosen. In the EU context (and perhaps in other contexts as well), there seems to be much inherent pressure to make the rules more “complex”. Moreover, for the debate initiated in summer 2004, there was also no willingness by countries to give up sovereignty nor was there a sense of urgency to strengthen public finances via tighter rule implementation and enforcement. In such an environment, it is likely that changes to fiscal rules make them more complicated, discretionary and, thereby, potentially less enforceable.The views expressed are those of the author and not of the ECB. Comments by Vitor Gaspar, Mark Hallerberg, Steven Keuning, Jose Marin, Richard Morris, Gilles Noblet, Hedwig Ongena, Luca Onorante, Rolf Strauch, Juergen von Hagen, an anonymous referee and valuable assistance by Anna Foden are much appreciated.     

The 1997–1998 break in industrial statistics: Facts and appraisal

In 1998, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in the published industrial statistics modified the scope of enterprises covered and the enterprise classification system. This paper highlights the modifications and identifies two implications. First, the use of a proportional allocation rule in data aggregation boosts the size of “public ownership,” an important cornerstone of socialism. Second, the switch from compiling detailed statistics on enterprises identified by an administrative criterion to enterprises that exceed a fixed volume of sales revenue poses new difficulties for comparative data analysis but also represents a change in statistical practice that may yet lead to data of better quality.     

Exchange-rate volatility, trade and “fixing for life” in Thailand

At the outset of the 1997 financial crisis, the quest to find a more suitable exchange-rate policy has become an urgent task facing the East Asian economies. One of the key policies agreed under Thailand’s August 1997 Letter of Intent (LOI) with the IMF was the adoption of a more flexible exchange-rate policy. However, the country re-adopted its pre-1997 crisis rigid exchange-rate policy in early 1999. To grasp this “fixing for your life” phenomenon, we test the impact of the exchange-rate volatilities of Thailand’s baht against the yen and the US dollar on the performance of the country’s bilateral trades with the two key partners.     

Are Environmental Social Movements Socially Exclusive? An Historical Study from Thailand

Environmental social movements in developing countries are often portrayed as democratizing but may contain important social divisions. This paper presents a new methodology to analyze the social composition and underlying political messages of movements. Nearly 5 000 newspaper reports during 1968–2000 in Thailand are analyzed to indicate the participation of middle and lower classes, and their association with “green” (conservationist) and “red-green” (livelihoods-oriented) environmental values. Results show middle-class “green” activism has dominated forests activism, but lower-class “red-green” activism has grown for forests and pollution. Newspapers, however, portray all environmentalism as “democratization,” suggesting that the possible exclusiveness of some environmental norms is unacknowledged.     

Statistical analysis of corruption data and using the Internet to reduce corruption

Corruption is a serious problem in Asia and elsewhere. The Harrison and Vinod (1992) confidence interval for the marginal excess burden (MEB) of taxation is used to estimates the economic harm arising from corruption. One dollar of corruption is estimated to impose a burden of $1.67, which becomes very large when compounded over time. After a brief review of economic theory, this paper uses data on sixteen socio-economic and political variables. A cross-sectional study reveals the relevance of “red tape” and “efficiency of judiciary.” A subset regression using Mallows’ Cp and Akaike information criteria reveals relevance of schooling and income inequality. International aid and cooperation in exposing and fighting corruption and innovative uses of the Internet for information exchange are claimed to be hopeful new tools to fight corruption in the new century.     

The meaning of “social safety nets”

In Southeast Asia, the issue of “social safety nets” (SSNs) has emerged more prominently since the financial crisis. Despite the increased interest in social safety nets, there is still considerable confusion among scholars and national and international organizations regarding the use and meaning of the term. This article considers the different definitions of the term—particularly as it was used during the Asian Financial Crisis—and to attempt to clarify its meaning and proper use.The safety net analogy is drawn from high-wire walkers who are protected by a safety net if they fall. The safety net prevents any walker who falls—unexpectedly or not—from hitting the floor and incurring catastrophic injuries. Following this line of reasoning, it is not surprising to learn that some organizations and scholars use the term SSN such that it encompasses private and public mechanisms that assist individuals in maintaining a minimum level of consumption.The term “social safety net” (SSN) began to be used by Bretton Woods’ institutions in connection with structural adjustment programs related to their lending programs. Developing countries introduced SSNs to mitigate the social impact of structural adjustment measures on specific low-income groups. They were initially formulated to serve three objectives: poverty alleviation, to make adjustment programs more politically acceptable, and institutional reform. During the Asian Financial Crisis, there was a great deal of confusion regarding the content and consequent identification of SSN programs.Public SSN programs can be classified into formal and informal safety nets. Formal and informal safety nets are, generally, distinguished by law enforcement: formal safety nets are those which legally guarantee individuals access to economic or social support whereas informal safety nets provide likelihood of support to individuals to assure them of attaining or remaining above the designated minimum standard of living but with no legal guarantee.Informal SSNs can be divided into private and public ones. Examples of private informal SSNs include transfers from family members, friends, neighbors and community members and institutions, including NGOs, while those of public informal SSNs refer to the support which individuals can hope for from the government, through programs which generate assets or employment, transfer income, or provide basic social services, as a means of helping affected individuals from falling below the designated minimum standard of living. The difference between formal and informal public SSNs is whether there exists a formal legal support of the assistance.The article has provided more discussion on the definitions of SSN used by the World Bank, ESCAP, ILO and TDRI.In conclusion, the authors note that the tremendous variation in the use of the term invites confusion and makes it virtually useless as a technical concept. The very nature of the metaphor invokes a vision of a large net that encompass a number of different types of programs. In many cases it is not even possible to list specific programs that are included, as the particular forms of these programs could, of course, vary with place, time and circumstances. Complicating things further, the term is sometimes used in a very narrow sense. Given the low probability that usage of the term will ever be standardized, economists and national/international organizations might be well served by avoiding the term completely and instead using its component parts.     

On labor incentives and work norm in Japanese firms

In this paper, we argue that social/corporate norms play an important role in achieving higher productivity and better economic welfare. We define “social norm” to be a standard of behavior suggested by a social custom, i.e., a customary choice of actions in each social situation. We reinterpret the well-known Nash equilibrium as a “norm equilibrium.” A norm equilibrium is a stable social norm, stable in the sense that there is no incentive to deviate from the behavior suggested by the prevailing social norm. This interpretation requires less information than the traditional interpretation. Moreover, we need not be concerned with the problem of refinement because it is the social norm itself which refines the equilibria. We apply this concept to the labor market. The key assumption is that the level of an individual worker's effort is private information known to workers as a whole; i.e., all workers' efforts are known to their fellow workers as well as to the workers themselves. We show that different work norms may emerge in different corporations at an equilibrium. In “prestigious” firms cooperation is the prevailing work norm, while in “nonprestigious” firms noncooperation is the norm. Thus, the efficiency wage hypothesis holds without the existence of unemployment. Some implications of this interpretation for the Japanese labor markets are discussed.     

Microcredit in Prefamine Ireland

Hundreds of independent, local, quasi-charitable microcredit societies, or “loan funds,” were lending to as many as 20% of Irish households in the mid-19th century. Their goal was to relieve poverty by providing credit to the “industrious poor” at competitive interest rates without public funding. They successfully mitigated informational, moral hazard, and enforcement problems, and operated at a surplus in a market where intermediation by the banks seems not to have been profitable. Loan fund activity offers new insights into capital formation in the 19th-century Irish economy and challenges traditional notions regarding the economic activities of the Irish poor. They are also relevant for economists studying current microcredit initiatives.     

Was the Currency Crisis in Argentina Self-Fulfilling?

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the 2002 crisis in Argentina was, at least to some extent, self-fulfilling. The theoretical basis we refer to is the so-called “second-generation” models. We use a Markov-switching model that allows us to empirically estimate the role played by fundamentals and/or shifts in devaluation expectations. Our results suggest that shifts in expectations have induced the crisis. However, because deteriorating fundamentals are also significant, we conclude that the collapse of the peg has been partly driven by adverse fundamentals and that abrupt shifts in devaluation expectations have forced a premature exit. JEL no. C22, D84, F31     

Market supplanting versus market fostering interventions: China, East Asia and other developing countries

The paper investigates the relationship between growth and different types of government intervention by distinguishing “market supplanting” regimes from “market fostering” interventions. A lesson from the East Asian miracle was not that governments necessarily intervened less, but they intervened efficiently in a relatively transparent and flexible way that kept overall distortions in check. China's reforms can be considered a transition from a “market supplanting” regime where market signals are distorted over long periods, to “market fostering” interventions in which government acts like a gardener. Alternative measures of government interventions were used to construct two composite policy indexes. Preliminary analysis suggests that “market fostering” interventions seem to have facilitated growth in productivity, although the result is inconclusive due to data limitations. Compared with the East Asian NIEs, China still has a long way to go in reforming the role of government in the economy.