Continuing demographic transitions in Asia

This article updates the literature survey on demographic trends and policies published in the May 1987 issue of this journal. It reports substantial adjustments in earlier population projections, suggesting slower decline in population growth rates for China and several other Asian countries. It gives an account of recent trends and policies in the Asian-Pacific region, especially China, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore.     

国际人口政策转向对中国的启示

世界人口面临新的形势,人口增长掉头,且人口转变呈现多元化态势,其根本原因是各国生育率以不同的速度下滑。世界人口大势的转变引发各国政府对生育率态度的转变以及对生育政策的调整。越来越多国家出台鼓励生育政策,这不仅发生在生育率长期低迷的欧洲,也发生在生育率快速下降的东亚和大洋洲。东亚地区日本、新加坡、韩国和中国台湾已转而推行鼓励生育措施,并不断加强政策力度,效果却差强人意。同样处于很低生育率水平的中国仍在努力维持当前的低生育水平,与他国的政策调整渐行渐远,这将对社会与家庭造成难以弥补的负面影响。中国人口政策的调整已迫在眉睫。     

How should Central Banks Respond to Non-neutral Inflation Expectations?

This paper investigates the net real inflation effect on output in ten countries, comprising both advanced and developing countries. An indicator is introduced to compute the net inflation effect on output (NIEO) based on the difference between two concepts of core inflation, where both are computed using the decomposition of VAR residuals. We find that for all countries, when inflation is increasing the NIEO is significantly positive and is negative during periods of decreasing inflation. Typically, countries which follow anti-inflationary policies if the NIEO is of small magnitude suffer relatively minimal damage in output, whereas if the same policies are undertaken when the NIEO is large the damaging effects on output could be much greater. This suggests that the NIEO could be a useful indicator of the likely effects of policy, especially for countries which have frequent episodes of high inflation, and in those countries which employ inflation-targeting policy, as the timing of monetary policy actions could be optimized to take account of this real effect of inflation.     

中亚五国的贸易分布、对外投资与贸易政策

丝绸之路经济带建设充分说明了我国与中亚五国合作的重要意义。本文通过对中亚五国的贸易分布、对外投资与贸易政策的分析发现,中亚五国的主要贸易伙伴是中国和俄罗斯;其外国直接投资表现为净流入;其贸易政策的本质是以贸易优惠吸引外资流入。为此,我国今后在与中亚五国经贸合作中器重视其贸易政策的本质。     

我国粮食安全的政策选择——基于影响粮食供给因素的分析

粮食安全问题已经成为世界各国关注的话题。我国耕地不断减少以及人口不断增加的现实情况,让我国粮食安全问题面临更加严峻的形势。文章基于影响我国粮食供给因素的分析,对维护我国粮食安全提出建设性的政策建议。     

The quality of host government and China’s OFDI: Construction of micro-evaluation model of government quality

Government is not only an important participant in the process of national governance, but also a firm executor and supervisor of national policies. In the process of China’s active promotion of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), the risks caused by the poor quality of the host government have not been paid enough attention to. This paper builds a micro-evaluation model of government quality from four aspects based on the quality of government expert survey. The results show that although the scores of developed countries are generally higher than those of developing countries, the growth of China’s OFDI in developing countries is higher than in developed countries. In particular, the growth of investment to the member states of The Belt and Road Initiative is more significant. How to realize mutually beneficial achievements between China's overseas investment and host countries with low government quality is an important issue for China.     

Fertility projection based on birth order data--a Swedish approach

"The decreasing fertility rates in Sweden during the 1970s can be explained as postponement of childbearing. An increasingly larger part of each generation has chosen to bear children at a late age, after education and some years of occupational work. As a consequence, the yearly age-specific rates will, in years to come, change systematically towards relatively high rates for women in the second half of the fertile period; changes which are important in population projections. To predict the future rates a model based on birth order data and assumptions about the final family size is used. The model and its application in the 1989 projection of the Swedish population is discussed in the paper. Alternative projections and the assumptions behind the alternatives are specified."     

Does Rising Income Inequality Reduce Life Expectancy? New Evidence for 26 European Countries (1995–2014)

An open debate these days is about how national income inequality could affect individuals’ health outcomes. Therefore, the present study aims to provide new evidence regarding life expectancy determinants and how they are related to the income inequality hypothesis. Precisely, it is provided new evidence on this relationship for 26 European countries during the period 1995–2014. The analysis is based on panel data techniques, with the latest data from both Eurostat and the OECD Health Statistics. Furthermore, data from the World Bank is also applied. Besides, we have tested the sensitivity of the estimates in our empirical analysis using three clusters of countries. Our results suggest that income inequality does not significantly reduce health in developed societies, like the European ones. Notwithstanding, as income inequality can be sometimes harmful for population health, these issues must be taken into account in order to improve health care policies.     

Past and future of the labor force in emerging Asian economies

In this paper we investigate the determinants of past changes in the labor force of 12 emerging Asian countries, and attempt to make projections of the labor force in those countries for the period 2010–2030. Results from our regression analysis of the labor force indicate that the wage earnings elasticity of labor supply is negative, albeit insignificant, for men and significantly positive for women, and it has a significantly positive association with educational level and a negative one with age. We also find that per capita income shows a negative relationship with the labor force in general for younger age groups and older age groups, and more capital-intensive countries have smaller female labor force. Using extrapolation, the paper predicts that the labor force will increase in all 12 countries during the first two decades of the period 2010–2030, but will eventually decline in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. The paper also makes projections of the unemployment rate and the average working hours in those countries.     

保护主义：铸就美国产业帝国的利器

目前发达国家在世界推销并强加给发展中国家的＂好政策＂,正是他们在赶超时反对当时的发达国家强加给它们的政策。贸易自由化的推动者的英国和美国,在赶超时期使用保护和补贴方面却是最敢做敢为的。不幸的是,这种事实目前鲜为人知,主流经济学已经将其成功地从经济史、经济思想史中删除或者阴谋性地进行歪曲＂计算＂。文章从演化经济学的视角回顾美国19世纪关税政策以及思想,指出其对我国当前发展的启示。     

Labour-market reforms in transition economies

Several lessons can be drawn from the natural experiments ofcentral and eastern European countries with labour-market policies.Two of them are particularly relevant also for OECD countries.First, it is not wise to reduce the duration of unemploymentbenefits when the length of unemployment spells are on the rise,unless (I) unemployment is still low and there is the administrativecapacity to implement active labour-market policies on a widescale or (ii) there are income support schemes of the last resortin place and an administration capable of cost-effectively enforcingwork-tests for those falling off unemployment benefit compensationrolls. The second and perhaps more positive lesson in the lightof the above is that it is possible to transform institutionand create an efficient policy delivery mechanism within a shorttime span.     

Analyzing and managing exchange-rate crises

This paper reviews theoretical work on exchange-rate crises and discusses recent attempts to reduce the risk of crises and manage them more effectively. Models usually used to explain crises—those in which they are due to bad policies and those in which they are due to self-fulfilling speculative attacks—do not often explain the timing of crises. Bad policies often play a role, but the onset of a crisis is frequently due to a political shock that leads market participants to revise their views about a government's ability to improve its policies. For this reason, efforts of the IMF to promote the publication of more economic data may not be very helpful in preventing crises. Turning to crisis management, the paper criticizes plans like those of Jeffrey Sachs, which would give soveregn debtors protection resembling that afforded by bankruptcy law. It favors instead the pragmatic approach developed in the report recently endorsed by the major industrial countries.     

发达国家风电产业政策比较研究

目前各国已将开发可再生能源置于重要战略地位,风能与太阳能、生物质能等可再生能源相比,最具规模开发条件和商业化发展前景。美国、德国、丹麦、西班牙四国风电产业一直处于领先地位,研究4国风电政策对我国发展风能有一定借鉴意义。本文从政府支持、法律强制、财政激励、合理定价、研发支持、宣传教育6个方面对比分析4国风电产业政策,并提出有利于我国发展的政策。     

Production versus reproduction: A threat to China's development strategy

The goals of the post-Mao leadership to turn China into a powerful and modern socialist society are jeopardized by the sum total of China's population and projected population growth rates. National development plans are thus based on policies to rapidly promote production and drastically reduce population growth, which at the local level make quite contradictory demands on peasant households. The question underlying China's future development is: can current production plans based on the responsibility system and expanding domestic sidelines which demand that peasant households have access to considerable labour resources be reconciled with State reproduction plants which demand that peasant households have only one child?     

The provision of urban housing in the BLS countries: Policy and strategy since independence

After studying housing policies applied in the Third World the conclusion was drawn that extensive housing shortages cannot be ascribed only to the rapid growth of the urban population, but that housing policies and strategies implemented in the past were equally important. On the one hand the housing policies and strategies were unrealistic in terms of standards and costs and on the other, there was a lack of planning and co‐ordination in the implementation of the housing strategies.

In this paper an attempt is made to test the validity of the above‐mentioned as applied to Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. The structures responsible for the provision of urban housing as well as the policies and strategies as applied in the BLS countries since independence are therefore analysed. Differences and similarities in the implementation of housing policies and strategies between the various BLS countries are also highlighted.     

超越市场失灵:产业政策理论前沿与中国启示

自国际金融危机爆发以来,西方发达国家普遍地出现了"重新思考产业政策"的热潮。在这种"产业政策的回潮"中,人们对"市场失灵"理论作为产业政策的理论基础所存在的缺陷提出了批评,进一步发展了系统失灵理论和能力理论等产业政策的新理论,并提出了企业家型政府理论,该理论认为,产业政策最重要的作用在于塑造市场和创造市场,而非修补市场失灵。文章认为,国外产业政策理论的这些新发展是以发达国家特别是以美国的产业政策实践为基础的,它不仅对产业政策只适合于追赶型经济的传统看法提出了挑战,而且也提出了如何认识发达国家产业政策的新类型或新工具的问题。产业政策理论及其实践的这些前沿问题对推进我国产业政策研究和改进我国产业政策实践都具有重要借鉴意义,文章从四个方面较深入地探讨了它对我国的相关启示。     

Substitution Monétaire dans les Pays Africains

The practice of currency substitution in developing countries in general, and in sub‐Saharan countries in particular, differs from what obtains in industrialized countries. Whereas in developed countries currency substitution is chiefly as a result of diversified port folios, in third world countries, the phenomenon arises from the neglect of the national currency by economic operators. This article aims first to study the various aspects of currency substitution in Africa based on the functions of money and, secondly, to access the consequences of this phenomenon on the economic policies governments intend to implement. After observing that currency substitution exists in Africa for varied reasons, such as paucity of payment instruments, high inflation rates, low effective interest rates, the weakness of a new currency, exchange rate fluctuations and so on, the most serious of which is capital flight, we have come to the conclusion that this practice seriously undermines the success of the envisioned monetary and/or budgetary policies of these countries.     

Capital Flows: Issues and Policies

This paper presents an analytical overview of recent contributions to the literature on the policy implications of capital flows in emerging and developing countries, focusing specifically on capital inflows as well as on the links between inflows and subsequent capital-flow reversals. The objective is to clarify the policy challenges that such inflows pose and to evaluate the policy alternatives available to the recipient countries to cope with those challenges. A large menu of possible policy responses to large capital inflows is considered, and experience with the use of such policies is reviewed. A policy “decision tree”—i.e., an algorithm for determining how to deploy policies in response to an exogenous inflow episode—is developed, and strategies to achieve resilience to both inflows and outflows in a world where exogenous events may frequently drive capital flows in both directions are discussed.     

The debate on the future of the population census: Relevance for South Africa?

The cancellation of the Canadian census long-form questionnaire in 2010 and its subsequent reinstatement in 2015 resulted in a vigorous international debate on the future of the mandatory census. Questions concerning state invasions of personal privacy, party political interference and public trust and cooperation in state data-gathering were raised. As a result, alternative forms of demographic data collection were explored and the experiences of other countries examined. National population registers and non-mandatory surveys offered alternatives, but each had their own distinct disadvantages. South Africa has continued to conduct mandatory detailed censuses since 1994 and the enumerations have encountered little political opposition because they are presented as essentially nation-building exercises providing credible and relevant data, upon which national policies may be based and monitored. At present there is little incentive to change the current format of statistical collection in the absence of a viable alternative.     

积极发展小城镇是加速农村现代化的战略选择

从中国具体国情出发,总结实践经验,吸取国际城市化的经验教训,我国选择了一条中国式的农村城镇化道路,积极稳妥地发展小城镇,转移农村大量富余劳动力和农业过剩人口,是加速中国农村工业化、农村城镇化和农业现代化的战略选择;推进农村城镇化,一定要立足于长远,制定建设与发展小城镇的科学规划;要深化相关体制的改革,制定一系列配套政策;要在发展农村小城镇的基础上,增加城市供给的内容,使它们增添城市的各种功能,把小城镇建设推进到"城镇城市化"的发展阶段,使其逐步成长为新型的小城市.