Level the Playing Field to Bolster the Boardroom: Sports as a Springboard for Women's Labor Force Advancement in Asia

We promote women's participation in sports as part of a solution to better integrate women into the labor force of Asian economies. Women in Asia lag other regions in terms of labor force participation and membership in corporate leadership bodies; this is particularly acute in East Asia. Involvement in sport has been found to be associated with long‐term economic benefits for women internationally, including enhanced returns to education and labor outcomes. We propose a number of sports program‐related policies for Asian countries to consider in order to better integrate women into education, society, labor, and corporate boardrooms.     

中国和印度的贸易扩张:威胁还是机遇?

本文探讨了中印之间以及中印与其它国家之间的贸易竞争性和互补性。研究结果表明:(1)印度在第三方市场,尤其在服装、纺织品和皮革制品等方面,面临来自中国的强烈竞争;(2)中印之间的贸易增长具有一定潜力;(3)中国在中等技术行业对东亚各国、美国和大多数欧洲国家构成挑战,而印度主要对周边的南亚国家构成威胁;(4)在贸易的互补性方面,中国和印度大幅上升的进口为美国、欧洲和东亚一些国家,尤其是日本、韩国、马来西亚、新加坡和泰国的出口提供了扩张的机会。同时我们发现中国的出口结构正在发生变化,技术密集型和高科技产品的出口份额在增加,这表明从长期来看,由中国劳动密集型产品出口带来的挑战将会削弱。本文探讨了中印之间以及中印与其它国家之间的贸易竞争性和互补性。研究结果表明:(1)印度在第三方市场,尤其在服装、纺织品和皮革制品等方面,面临来自中国的强烈竞争;(2)中印之间的贸易增长具有一定潜力;(3)中国在中等技术行业对东亚各国、美国和大多数欧洲国家构成挑战,而印度主要对周边的南亚国家构成威胁;(4)在贸易的互补性方面,中国和印度大幅上升的进口为美国、欧洲和东亚一些国家,尤其是日本、韩国、马来西亚、新加坡和泰国的出口提供了扩张的机会。同时我们发现中国的出口结构正在发生变化,技术密集型和高科技产品的出口份额在增加,这表明从长期来看,由中国劳动密集型产品出口带来的挑战将会削弱。     

高校民族教学存在的问题及建议

教育水平的高低影响着一个民族和地区的发展。高校教学水平又间接影响着在校大学生的就业前景。近年来，新疆少数民族教学得到了较大的发展，但仍存在一些问题。新疆高校进行民族教学改革成为目前政府、教育部门和高校教师的重要任务。可以通过加强民族教师队伍建设、充分发挥班主任及辅导员对提高民族大学生综合素质的作用以及加强外语和汉语教学改革等举措促进新疆高校民族教学的进一步发展。     

A SEARCH FOR CLOSER ECONOMIC RELATIONS IN EAST ASIA

In recent years, growing interdependence in East Asia through trade and financial cooperation heightened the need for East Asian Economies to engage in closer regional economic relations. This paper attempts to discuss emerging economic integration efforts in East Asia with special reference to bilateral and regional free trade agreements. It discusses backgrounds for recent developments of East Asian regionalism in terms of deepening intraregional economic dependence and financial cooperation, and South Korea's position towards FTAs with major trading partners as well as East Asian economic integration. Important issues and challenges for an East Asian FTA are presented.     

Is a monetary union feasible for East Asia?

The empirical suitability of the East Asian economies for potential monetary integration is assessed. The structural vector autoregression (VAR) method is employed to identify the underlying shocks using a three-variable VAR model across the East Asian economies. The estimates of the EEC are used as a benchmark to compare the size of the underlying shocks and the speed of adjustment to shocks in both regions to determine the feasibility of forming an optimum currency area (OCA) in East Asia. The empirical results do not display strong support for forming an OCA in the East Asian region. The results do imply, however, that some small subregions are potential candidates for OCAs, since their disturbances are correlated and small and these economies adjust rapidly to shocks.     

Business Cycle Co‐movement between Australia and East Asia

This article analyses business cycle co‐movement between Australia and 10 major economies in the East‐Asian region by using two measures: concordance indices and correlation coefficients. The results from the concordance index suggest that Australia's business cycle is becoming increasingly synchronised with those in East Asia, particularly with China and Japan. The correlation coefficients of gross domestic product (GDP) growth and the deviation of real GDP from its trend between Australia and its East‐Asian neighbours are also significantly higher since 2000, relative to the correlation coefficients found for the 1990s. The growing importance of East Asia in Australia's economic future implies that the risks facing the economy have changed and Australia needs to engage in more macroeconomic policy dialogues with its neighbouring economies to improve their policy responses.     

Can a comparative capitalism approach explain fiscal policy activism?

This study investigates the implications of models of capitalism for the responsiveness of countries’ fiscal policies during business cycles using new data for member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and China. We expand the literature by adding the category of East Asian nonliberal capitalism to the established distinction of liberal market economies and nonliberal coordinated market economies. These three differ substantially not just in their fiscal policies, but also in monetary policies, degree of financial market orientation, exchange rate regime, and labor market organization. As in previous studies, we find that governments of liberal economies adopt more countercyclical fiscal policies. Departing from existing studies, however, among the nonliberal models of capitalism, (East Asian) state-led models have more countercyclical fiscal policies than (European) coordinated market economies, perhaps as countercyclical as liberal economies, both historically and during the 2007–9 crisis. This is due to less independent central banks, managed float of exchange rates, and limited financial market orientation and financial openness in East Asia, which allow for more active fiscal policy. Among political factors, left-of-center governments, fractionalized party systems, and election years are associated weakly with countercyclical fiscal policy, as expected. Labor market coordination and welfare generosity have unclear roles in regard to fiscal policy, a topic for future research.     

我国高等教育国际化的发展特点及其推进策略

目前,高等教育国际化已成为全球教育发展的总趋势。在这一发展趋势下,各国对于教育资源共享与教育信息交流的认识更加深刻,世界性的教育价值观念不断形成和加强,同时各国的教育正面临着共同的挑战。为了迎接这一共同的挑战,中国需要认真思考高等教育国际化的发展特点,并制定相应的推进策略,这对于我国高等教育的国际化发展有着重要的意义。     

TOWARD A REGIONAL EXCHANGE RATE REGIME IN EAST ASIA

Abstract.  Deepening market-driven economic integration in East Asia makes intraregional exchange rate across the region increasingly desirable and necessary. The paper suggests that East Asia's emerging economies begin to choose a currency basket as a monetary policy anchor to enable all East Asian currencies to collectively appreciate vis-à-vis the US dollar, while maintaining intraregional rate stability, in the event of surges of capital inflows or a rapid unwinding of global payments imbalances. Following this initial step, East Asia may agree on more rigid intraregional exchange rate stabilization schemes through, for example, an Asian Snake or an Asian Exchange Rate Mechanism.     

Japan's Higher Education Policies under Global Challenges

Over the past 20 years, Japan's higher education policy has been strongly influenced by national policies for achieving world-class excellence as a tool for economic and social development. However, Japan's universities, especially the top universities, have faced difficulties in maintaining an international presence, both in terms of academic excellence and the development of globally competitive human resources. This paper reflects on how national policies, especially economic and fiscal policies, have intervened in higher education since the beginning of the 21st century, and then investigates the impact of these policies and discusses the future perspective on Japan's higher education given the current global challenges.     

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.     

A note on schooling and wage inequality in the public and private sector

The few studies that have examined the wage impact of education across the earning distribution have focused on high-income countries and show education to be more profitable at the top of the distribution. The implication is that education may increase inequality. Extending the analysis to 16 East Asian and Latin American countries, in Latin America we observe a pattern similar to that of Europe/North America (increasing wage effects), while in East Asia the wage effects are predominantly decreasing by earnings quantile. However, once the analysis is performed separately for the public and the private sector, it is revealed that the strongly decreasing impact of schooling on earnings in the public sectors of East Asian countries is responsible for the overall observed decreasing pattern, while the impact of schooling on earnings in the private sectors of these countries is non-decreasing.     

The 1997 Asian Currency Crisis,Financial Linkages,and the Monetary Policy of Japan

The evidence is examined that excessively liberal monetary policy by the Bank of Japan, before and after the financial collapse of Japan in 1992, may have led other East Asian economies into “over‐borrowing” and speculative investments, prior to the currency crisis in 1997–98. The authors test for cointegration and Granger causality between Japanese money supply M1 and the domestic investment of eight East Asian economies and Australia. US and German money supplies are also used as a benchmark. There is strong evidence that there are long‐ and short‐run causal relationships between the Japanese money supply and the domestic investment of the Asian crisis‐inflicted economies prior to 1997.     

Stress test for reforms: Transition and East Asian 'contagion'

Contagion from East Asia imposed a severe 'stress test' on the market-orientedreforms of transition economies. We find that the portfolio reallocations of investors differentiated sharply among these economies at the height of the East Asian turmoil, appearing clearly in the relative movements in interest rates and share prices. Those countries that appeared more vulnerable to contagion had large public or private sector imbalances and low reserve cover of short-term debt. The analysis, however, goes beyond macroeconomic and financial imbalances to link these weak fundamentals to inadequate structural and institutional reforms. We find that flaws in public finances together with weak enterprises and financial institutions were key underlying factors in the vulnerability to East Asian contagion. They were also key causes of the Russian crisis, which initiated a new round of contagion driven primarily by high exposures to Russian trade.     

高等教育能打破社会阶层固化吗?--基于有序probit半参数估计及夏普里值分解的实证分析

文章基于2013年中国综合社会调查(CGSS2013)数据,首先运用有序probit 模型的半参数估计方法检验高等教育对社会阶层的影响,其次采用最新发展的基于 R2的夏普里值方法测度高等教育对社会分层形成的贡献率,并从区域视角管窥经济发展和市场化转型条件下高等教育受影响的演进趋势。结果显示：(1)接受过高等教育的居民,确实拥有更高的社会阶层评估。但若剔除家庭背景带来的接受高等教育机会的差距,高等教育促进社会阶层流动的能力明显弱化。基于R2的夏普里值分解表明,高等教育变量的贡献率不到10%,撇去高等教育的代际传递效应后,净效应更低。(2)东部地区有微弱的证据显示高等教育带来的社会阶层提升效应正在展现。无论是从总贡献率还是分解后的直接贡献率看,东部地区的百分比贡献都要高于中西部地区。这说明随着经济发展和市场化改革的推进,高等教育改善社会分层的效果有可能会强化。(3)影响社会分层差异最重要的因素为家庭过去的社会阶层,即社会阶层分布存在明显的代际传递现象。另外,个体特征及经济特征也是影响社会分层的重要因素。文章研究显示,要进一步推进开放型社会阶层的形成,需要在构建市场化导向能力本位的新型社会流动体系制度框架下,确立更为公平的高等教育竞争机制及补偿机制。     

Corporate Giantism,Degradation of the Plane of Competition,and Countervailance

Thorstein Veblen argued, in The Higher Learning in America, that universities were at risk of being captured by the same pecuniary aims as business enterprise. His argument remains relevant today, given that many observers claim that higher education is headed for fundamental transformation. These changes are occurring in response to a number of challenges facing higher education in the United States — financial, demographic, and cultural, aiming both to reform what is seen by many as a system resistant to change and accountability, and to take advantage of new technologies seen as improving accessibility and convenience for its consumers, the students. I briefly review Veblen’s argument by using its general contours as a lens for the major disruptions occurring in higher education today, and specifically the rise of for-profit universities, the expansion of online learning and massive open-online courses (MOOCs), and the growing movement to unbundle the educational experience.     

Educational Production in East Asia: The Impact of Family Background and Schooling Policies on Student Performance

Abstract. East Asian students regularly take top positions in international league tables of educational performance. Using internationally comparable student-level data, I estimate how family background and schooling policies affect student performance in five high-performing East Asian economies. Family background is a strong predictor of student performance in Korea and Singapore, while Hong Kong and Thailand achieve more equalized outcomes. There is no evidence that smaller classes improve student performance in East Asia. But other schooling policies such as school autonomy over salaries and regular homework assignments are related to higher student performance in several of the considered countries.     

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.     

Cost structure,productivity and efficiency of the Italian public higher education industry 2001–2011

In this paper, I analyze the cost structure of the Italian higher education system for the decade between 2001 and 2011, by means of a stochastic translog cost function. I suggest that the judgment about the optimal configuration of the sector is strongly dependent upon the policy priorities set by decision makers. When assuming that the universities’ output is the number of students, scale economies are exhausted, and marginal costs are relatively low; when considering graduates as outputs instead, there is opportunity for increasing the scale of operations. Inefficiency affects production in a sensible manner, especially when assuming that the target output is the number of graduates. Moreover, efficiency contributes to explaining a relevant portion of the productivity increases in the period. No significant scope economies between teaching and research emerge, suggesting that a higher degree of universities’ specialization can be a direction for improving the sector’s efficiency and productivity.     

The financial cycles in four East Asian economies

This paper characterizes proxy measures of financial cycles using available data on four East Asian economies, viz., Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Spectral analysis is adopted to characterize the financial cycles and these cycles are compared with the business cycles of the four East Asian economies. The empirical findings indicated that with the exception of the equity price growth in Hong Kong, the period of the proxy measures for financial cycles is slightly longer than the period of the business cycle. More to the point, there is no evidence to show that the period of the proxy measures for financial cycles in these economies are operating at low frequencies similar to the period of the cycles of between 8 to 32 years observed for advanced economies such as the US, UK and Germany. Taking one step further, the paper finds that the financial cycles of these four economies are better captured by a band-pass filter estimated using the periods obtained in the paper as opposed to using long period cycles of between 8 to 32 years. These findings imply that one needs to be careful in making an a priori assumption on the frequency range the financial cycle is believed to operate.