Emigration in the long run: evidence from two global centuries

International migration in the last half century is often characterised as following an inexorable upward trend that can only be stemmed by tougher immigration policies in the rich OECD. This view fails to pay sufficient attention to the supply-side forces that drive emigration from poor to rich countries. European mass migrations before 1914 suggest that emigration typically traces out what is sometimes called the 'migration hump' and what we call an 'emigration life cycle'. This paper examines the forces that underlay the mass migration from pre-1914 Europe and compares them with the experience since 1970. Despite the great importance of restrictive immigration policy today, we find the same forces at work in poor source countries today as a century ago. Our results also suggest that, contrary to popular belief, emigration pressure from the Third World is beginning to ease.     

Financing investment in East Asia: Regional or global savings?

This paper investigates the extent to which domestic investment in East Asian countries is financed by domestic, (East Asian) regional and global savings in order to infer the relative importance of regional vs. global capital markets in East Asia. Panel regression results show that regional saving in East Asia plays a much more important role than global saving in financing investment in the region. The results suggest that global capital flows, despite its huge volume in East Asia, does not contribute to proper investment financing. The results also show that Japanese saving has significant effects on regional investment but Chinese saving does not.     

The Western European marriage pattern and economic development

For several centuries before the First World War women's age at first marriage in the west of Europe was higher than in the east (and in the rest of the world). In their low mortality regimes Western Europeans chose lower fertility in part through a higher female age at marriage. This allowed women to increase their human capital both formally and informally in the years before child bearing so that more informed mothers brought up better educated offspring. The demographic pattern influenced the stock of human capital and directly contributed to Western Europe's development advantage. The predicted relations of this economic model of the household are tested with two datasets, one at the county level for England for the second half of the nineteenth century and the other at the national level for Europe 1870–1910.     

What happened to regional inequality in Britain in the twentieth century?

New estimates of regional GDP for Great Britain in the twentieth century differ from those of Crafts but confirm his hypothesis of a U‐shaped regional inequality curve between 1911 and 2001. Comparison of these estimates with revised estimates for 1861–1911 suggests that the decline in inequality in the first half of the twentieth century forms part of a trend of declining regional inequality and catch‐up of the poorer regions with the richest (the South East) dating back to the 1860s at least. This convergence trend was interrupted by the First World War and the subsequent difficulties of Outer Britain in the 1920s when the gap between the South East and the rest widened. However, sometime after 1931 it picked up again. Since 1971 inequality has worsened and catch‐up has stopped; indeed, there has been divergence of the South East from the rest. This divergence has been especially marked since 1991. Although growth for all regions was faster during the period of increasing regional inequality that encompasses the second half of the twentieth century, the golden age of economic growth for regions outside the South East occurred during the long boom following the Second World War.     

A Tale of Two Peripheries: Real Wages in Denmark and New Zealand 1875–1939.

Abstract

Denmark achieved dramatic real wage growth after 1870, compared to other European economies and to those of the New World. The ingredients of Denmark's success are gauged by comparison with one its major competitors in the British food-products markets, New Zealand. Faster Danish productivity growth explains only part of Denmark's faster real wage growth. Open economy forces, chiefly international capital flows before 1913, and especially Danish trade union militancy around the end of World War I, influenced income distribution and especially favoured wages over property income in Denmark. Denmark's GDP per capita equalled New Zealand levels between the world wars but her real wages surged past those of New Zealand as distributional shifts favoured Denmark's wage earners.     

国际金融整合下资金流动与经济增长关系研究——基于新兴经济体面板数据的分析

在引入特定的宏观经济、金融和政策变量等控制变量后,本文尝试检验东欧、东亚和拉丁美洲三大主要新兴经济体的资金流动方向及其对经济增长的影响。实证结果显示:东欧地区收入水平与金融深化程度仍然偏低,但随着发展程度提高,未来将由资金流入转为流出。东亚地区的超额外汇储备、贸易顺差与资金流出,被指控为造成美国巨额经常账户赤字与全球经常账户失衡的主要原因之一。但该地区若能够持续进行金融深化,资金可能回流并使全球经常账户失衡现象得以缓解。至于拉丁美洲地区的宏观经济、金融和政策变量,对资金流动方向并无决定性影响,财政与货币政策仍是决定资金流入能否有助于经济增长的关键因素。最后,本文对解决我国国际收支不平衡问题提出了政策建议。     

THE SECOND NOEL BUTLIN LECTURE: LABOUR-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIALISATION IN GLOBAL HISTORY

East Asian industrialisation has shown that modern industry has occurred across different cultures under a variety of factor-endowment conditions. The global history of the diffusion of industrialisation over the past two centuries suggests two distinct routes. The first is the 'Western path' associated with capital- and energy-intensive industry. The second path to creating a modern industrial economy is the 'East Asian path' based on labour-intensive industrialisation that has built on quality labour resources cultivated in the traditional sector. This was the path followed by Japan from the nineteenth century and by many other countries in Asia during the twentieth century.     

东亚金融一体化的动态及其收益

近年来，东亚一系列区域金融合作引起了学术界对地区金融一体化现状和收益的极大兴趣。文章基于价格和数量的测度考察了东亚地区金融一体化的程度：抛补利差和股权溢价的β收敛结果表明，危机之前东亚金融市场的全球和区域一体化并行，但在近几年，区域一体化趋势更强劲，超过了全球一体化；金融引力模型的结果表明，东亚主要的跨境金融投资者的区域内金融资产持有量比金融引力模型预测的水平更大。此外，面板回归确定了较高的金融一体化作为更广泛的金融发展的关键组成部分，会显著降低东亚国家对发达国家的经常账户失衡，因此，区域层面的金融一体化可以作为加强东亚国家的增长来源和提高经济弹性的重要政策路径。     

Do exchange rate arrangements and capital controls influence international capital flows and housing prices in Asia?

This paper investigates the influence of international capital flows on housing prices in eight Asian countries, including China. We focus on determining whether exchange rate arrangements and capital regulations influence capital inflows and housing prices. Our results show that an arrangement to restrain the fluctuation of the exchange rate and capital controls has the potential to raise housing prices in Asia. The strong prospect of the Chinese yuan's appreciation also pushed up housing prices in China. Another expected reason for the increase in capital inflows into Asian markets is the expansion of global liquidity. Such capital flows often have a sensitive reaction to market sentiment, and an increase in asset market volatility caused by the liquidity squeeze decreases Asian housing prices. These results suggest the need to review capital controls and future exchange rate system options for Asian countries.     

Substitutes or complements? The interactions between components of capital inflows for Asia

Despite an emerging and interesting literature on the pecking order of capital flows that might arise from asymmetric information and financing constraints, the dynamics of the interactions between the various components of capital flows, namely FDI, portfolio equity, portfolio debt and bank flows appear a little under-researched. This paper presents an empirical examination of this issue for a sample of East Asian countries – looking only at the inflows of capital – by asking the following questions: Are the respective components of capital flows substitutes or complements? Does one type of capital flow enhance or inhibit the others? Is this effect mitigated or exacerbated during crises? What effect does the volatility of each of the components of flows have on the level of each flow? The policy implications of this analysis can be viewed in terms of countries financial liberalisation policies. If two types of flows are substitutes, then a policy of liberalising, or indeed restricting, one type of flow may actually crowd out the other. This may well be an unintended consequence of a country's financial liberalisation policy.     

东亚股票市场的一体化及其趋势——基于股指趋同性的分析

伴随着国际资金的频繁流动,东亚金融市场成为国际证券投资的主要地区。东亚各国和地区为了使其股票市场健康稳定发展,采取了一系列措施增强其区域内股票市场的一体化程度。本文通过Johansen协整,方差分解等方法,分析了当前东亚股票市场的股票指数与两大国际股票市场(美国和日本)股票指数的趋同性,以此为基础讨论东亚股票市场的全球一体化程度与区域一体化程度。本文研究发现,东亚股票市场的一体化程度不高,但其全球化程度高于其区域化程度。     

The Asian crisis: what did we learn and when did we learn it?

This paper steps back from the detail of the Asian crisis, to ask whether the 1997 crisis advanced our broad understanding of the age‐old problem of economic crises. Some immediate lessons were learned from the failures of the crisis‐response in Indonesia, which was the worst‐affected economy. It is notable, however, how little changed to address the ongoing systemic weaknesses. Three areas of unresolved vulnerability can be identified. First, the sudden stops and reversals of international capital flows. Second, the intrinsic fragility of a financial system that borrows short and lends long. Third, unanchored exchange rates, where the market's price‐discovery can take the rate to levels far from equilibrium, for sustained periods. For more than a decade after the Asian crisis, international capital flows continued to be seen as unambiguously beneficial, with any attempts at capital flow management rejected. At a global level, it was not until the 2008 financial crisis that widespread financial fragility was addressed through tighter regulation and higher capital requirements. On exchange rates, misleading advocacy of corner solutions—either pure floating exchange rates or immutable fixed rates—continued in the face of the real‐world experience that sometimes intervention is needed to maintain an exchange rate close to equilibrium.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed:
Jiri Okamoto (ed.), Trade Liberalization and APEC
Abdul Rahman Embong (ed.), Globalisation, Culture and Inequalities: in honour of the late Ishak Shari
Melanie Beresford and Tran Ngo Angie (eds), Reaching for the Dream: challenges of sustainable development in Vietnam
Ding Lu and William A.W. Neilson (eds), China's West Region Development: domestic strategies and global implications
Ramkishen S. Rajan, Economic Globalization and Asia: essays on finance, trade and taxation
Calla Wiemer and Heping Cao (eds), Asian Economic Cooperation in the New Millennium: China's economic presence
O. Fiona Yap, Citizen Power, Politics, and the 'Asian Miracle': reassessing the dynamics
Economic Analytical Unit, Papua New Guinea: the road ahead
Xiaoming Huang, The Rise and Fall of the East Asian Growth System, 1951–2000
Ramkishen S. Rajan (ed.), Sustaining Competitiveness in the New Global Economy
Nagesh Kumar (ed.), Towards an Asian Economic Community: vision of a new Asia
Sanjeev Gupta, Benedict Clements and Gabriela Inchauste (eds), Helping Countries Develop: the role of fiscal policy
Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung, Behind the Teak Curtain: authoritarianism, agricultural policies and political legitimacy in rural Burma/Myanmar
Francois Bourguignon, Francisco H.G. Ferreira and Nora Lustig (eds), The Microeconomics of Income Distribution Dynamics in East Asia and Latin America     

Leaning against the wind: Macroprudential policy in Asia

In recent years, many countries have adopted macroprudential measures to safeguard financial stability, in particular to deal with the credit and asset price cycles driven by global capital flows. Using a newly constructed database on macroprudential instruments and capital flow measures in 13 Asian economies and 33 economies in other regions for the period 2000–2013, the paper formulates various macroprudential policy indices, aggregating sub-indices on key instruments. Asian economies appear to have made greater use of macroprudential tools, especially housing-related measures, than their counterparts in other regions. The effects of macroprudential policy are assessed through an event study, cross-country macro panel regressions, and bank-level micro panel regressions. The analysis suggests that housing-related macroprudential instruments-particularly loan-to-value ratio caps and housing tax measures—have helped curb housing price growth, credit growth, and bank leverage in Asia.     

Financial Globalization and Banking Crises in Emerging Markets

Bank crises in emerging economies have been a feature of the recent global crisis, and their incidence has increased in the post-Bretton Woods era. This paper investigates the impact of financial globalization on the incidence of systemic bank crises in 20 emerging markets over the years 1976–2002 using measures of de facto and de jure financial openness. An increase in foreign debt liabilities contributes to an increase in the incidence of crises, but foreign direct investment and portfolio equity liabilities have the opposite effect. A more liberal de jure capital regime lowers the incidence of banking crises, while a regime of fixed exchange rates increases their frequency. The results of the econometric analysis is consistent with the experience of East European and central Asian emerging markets, which attracted a relatively large proportion of capital flows in the form of debt in recent years and have been particularly hard hit by the global financial crisis.     

Macroprudential policy in a currency union

Review of World Economics - The past 20 years in Europe have seen large swings in real and financial markets, and sudden stops of capital flows have exposed the fault lines of the European...     

Rethinking Industrial Policy for Low Income Countries

Abstract: The governments of low income countries should be giving more attention to ‘industrial policy’ than they and the aid donors have given in the past quarter century. (‘Industrial policy’ means any sectorally or activity‐targeted interventions, including in agriculture and services.) The first step is to discard the common assumption that industrial policy is about ‘picking winners’. The second step is to realize that industrial policy can be done ‘big’ or ‘small’, and by ‘leading the market’ or by ‘following the market’. It can be tailored to the available resources and state capacity. The third step is to see that the key issues of industrial policy are less to do with ‘what activities should be encouraged?’, or ‘what sorts of policy instruments are best?’, and more to do with, ‘how do we organize a process of discovery of sensible objectives and policies?’, and ‘how do we organize a constant nudging of producers to upgrade, diversify, link up with foreign firms?’ (where the nudging effort has to be targeted at some activities and sectors more than others). The paper illustrates with East Asian examples. One of the good effects of the current global crisis is that it has shaken confidence in the virtues of lightly regulated markets and free capital movements, and opened the way to a less ideologically charged debate about the role of the state in development—in which thinking is not precluded by easy jeers like ‘governments can't pick winners’ or ‘maybe the East Asians can do it but you can’t, so you have nothing to learn about industrial policy from them’.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this articles:
Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. By Alice M. Amsden.
Fisheries development
Economics of Fishery Management in the Pacific Islands Region. Edited by H. Campbell; K. Menz and G. Waugh.
Regional co-operation
ASEAN Industrial Co-operation: Future Perspectives and an Alternative Scheme. Edited by Chee Peng Lim and Jang-Won Sun.
China's Social Economic Zones
The Political Economy of China's Special Economic Zones. By George T. Crane.
Australia's relations with Asia
Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy. By Ross Garnaut.
Economic success in East Asia
Achieving Industrialization in East Asia. Edited by Helen Hughes.
Paradoxes in PNG economy
Growth, Structural Change and Economic Policy in Papua New Guinea: Implications for Agriculture. By Frank G. Jarrett and Kym Anderson.
History of banking in East Asia
The Hong Kong Bank in the Period of Imperialism and War, 1895–1918. Volume II of the History of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. By Frank H. H. King with David J. S. King and Catherine E. King.
Mercantilism vs. classical economics
National Economics. By Alejandro Lichauco.
Thai economic history
Economic Development of Thailand, 1850–1950: Response to the Challenge of the World Economy. By Sompop Manarungsan.
Predictable catastrophe
City on the Rocks: Hong Kong's Uncertain Future. By Kevin Rafferty.
Mouldering Pearl: Hong Kong at the Crossroads. By Felix Patrikeef.
Development of Singapore's economy
Management of Success: The Moulding of Modern Singapore. Edited by Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley.
Economics of food
Food Price Policy in Asia: A Comparative Study. Edited by Terry Sicular.
Development economics
Proceedings of the World Bank Annual Conference on Development Economics 1989.     

Tracing Trade Interdependence between EU and East Asia

Abstract

There have been two related trends shaping global trade during the past couple of decades: the increasing role of international supply chains and the rise of China. Increased complexity in global trade has generated a need to construct more processed trade data — trade in value added — in order to deepen our understanding of trade relations between countries. In this article, we present a broad picture of trade in value added between the EU28 and East Asian countries. We find that East Asia is important as a final demand and supply chain export destination, especially for Northern European countries, while for CEE countries it is more important as an import source for both final demand and supply chain trade. Trade with East Asia is least important for Southern European countries. The production structure of an EU country seems to be one of the main factors explaining the importance of supply chain trade with East Asian countries. The data also suggest that supply chain trade could support the growth of domestic value-added exports to the supply chain trade partner country as well as to other countries.     

The role of production fragmentation in international business cycle synchronization in East Asia

This paper analyzes factors contributing to the observed increase in international business cycle synchronization between eight East Asian developing countries and the major developed economies of Japan and the United States. To this end, a two-country dynamic general equilibrium (DGE) model is proposed which focuses on the role of production fragmentation among these countries. A key feature of the model is that it includes the trade in differentiated capital goods, which are added to the capital stock for production, and the technology embodied in these capital goods. The parameters of the model are calibrated using actual data of the countries included. Model simulations are conducted for two periods (1993–1997 and 1999–2005), before and after the Asian financial crisis, showing that the increase in business cycle synchronization can be attributed mainly to the growing fragmentation of production activities.