钟朋荣：中国别给热钱打工

采访钟朋荣已不是第一次了,每次与他交流,都会给记者留下深刻的记忆。因为从他的言谈中,总会让你在平和中感受到一个经济学家的智慧。这一次也一样,采访前,记者做了充分的准备,也带了一大堆问题过去。可是,没等记者发问,钟朋荣已经说出了对热钱这一话题的独到见解。     

Indian Ocean Rim: Assessing the prospects for cooperation and integration

This article assesses recent events leading to the establishment in 1997 of a regional organisation for the Indian Ocean Rim, subtitled an Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR‐ARC). This is a case of ‘open’ regionalism of the functionalist kind. New members may be admitted in 1999 and, as trade integration has not been ruled out, the openness of the design may lead to the changeover from regional cooperation to regional integration after 2004. By 2003 the members of the Association for South‐East Asian Nations (Asean) of the IOR‐ARC will have free‐trade arrangements in that region and by 2004 the SADC members of the IOR‐ARC will be similarly structured, making a free‐trade scenario within the IOR almost irresistible. This will create new problems, making it very difficult for the less competitive nations to endorse their continued membership of this bloc unless project cooperation now under way makes complementarity more meaningful, equipping states and market sectors to cope better with the more competitive nature of free trade that always applies in market integration. This will pose great challenges for South Africa.     

Economic History of Asia: comparative perspectives

This article surveys studies that provide a comparative perspective on the economic history of Asia. The available paradigms tend to be extrapolations of the relatively well-researched long-term development of Japan and China. It remains to be seen whether these apply to other Asian countries, but they are likely to further comparative research that will help to focus scholarship on the crucial factors in understanding long-term economic development in Asia.     

Housing in Russia: Situation and perspectives

The state of housing facilities is analyzed, the housing construction results for the last ten years in Russian regions are assessed, the problems regarding the complete overhaul of housing facilities and the civil engineering infrastructure of residential areas are analyzed with the help of various measurements, and forecasts and possible scenarios of the development of housing facilities are provided.     

The firm's demand for daily hours of work: Some implications

Conclusion This paper starts with an intuitively plausible assumption about the way in which a worker's effectiveness varies over the workday. It develops a number of interesting implications of this assumption. First, in the absence of fixed costs of hiring and premium pay for overtime, hours per day per worker desired by the firm would not vary with the wage. Second, with fixed costs of hiring and a premium-pay-for-overtime requirement, there is likely to be a bunching of firms with desired workdays of eight hours. Third, holding hiring costs constant, desired hours will decrease with expected length of stay (expected tenure) of the employee. Fourth, the framework can be used to analyze the way in which increases in the minimum wage affect both hours per worker and the number of employees. The authors would like to thank Sherwin Rosen for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Intra-industry trade: Current perspectives and unresolved issues

Zusammenfassung Der intra-industrielle Handel. Gegenw?rtige Perspektiven und ungel?ste Probleme. - Der intra-industrielle Handel stand als Untersuchungsgegenstand in den letzten 25 Jahren und besonders im letzten Jahrzehnt in der vordersten Front weltwirtschaftlicher Forschung. Dieser Aufsatz versucht, die inzwischen umfangreich gewordene Literatur zu sichten und die Gebiete zu identifizieren, denen sich die Forscher in der n?chsten Zeit mit Erfolg widmen sollten. Die Arbeit konzentriert sich auf Theorie, Messung, empirische Analyse und politische Aspekte des intra-industriellen Handels. Für jedes dieser Gebiete werden die gegenw?rtigen Perspektiven herausgearbeitet und die ungel?sten Fragen er?rtert. Der Aufsatz kommt zu dem Ergebnis, da\ es Fortschritte beim intra-industriellen Handel als Forschungsprogramm gegeben hat und da\ es zahlreiche Fragen gibt, die noch nicht untersucht worden sind.

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Résumé Le commerce intra-industriel: perspective courante et questions ouvertes. - Le commerce intra-industriel a été un sujet de clé pour des investigateurs en sciences économiques internationales pendant les dernières vingt-cinq années et particulièrement pendant la dernière décade. Dans cet article les auteurs essaient d’évaluer la littérature volumineuse et d’identifier les sujets sur lesquels les investigateurs pourraient se concentrer en future prochaine. L’article se concentre sur les études concernant la théorie, le mesurage, l’analyse empirique et les aspects politiques. Ils identifient pour chaque de ces sujets les perspectives courantes et discutent les questions ouvertes. Ils tirent la conclusion que le commerce intra-industriel a été un programme de recherche progressif et qu’il y a un nombre extensif des questions qu’il faut analyser.

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Resumen El comercio intrasectorial: perspectiva actual y problemas pendientes. - El comercio intrasectorial ha sido un área de frontera para investigadores de la economfa internacional durante los últimos veinticinco a?os y particularmente durante la última década. Este trabajo intenta revisar lo que hoy constituye una voluminosa literatura e identificar aquellas áreas que merezcan la atención de los investigadores en el futuro immediato. El trabajo se concentra en aspectos teóricos, relativos a la medición, al análisis empírico y a la política. Para cada una de estas areas se identifican las perspectivas actuales y se discuten los problemas pendientes. Se concluye que el comercio intrasectorial ha sido un programa de investigation progresivo y que aún permanecen sin explorar numerosos aspectos.

     

Crises in Asia: Historical perspectives and implications

The paper analyzes the stylized features of historical crisis episodes for 21 developing Asian economies over 1961–2007. The paper finds that while there is substantial diversity, on average, recessions and financial downturns are more frequent, longer lasting, and more severe in Asia than in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. The paper also finds that the likelihood and severity of a recession tends to increase when it is associated with credit crunches or stock market crashes. Severe financial downturns or recessions in the global economy are often coupled with financial crises or recessions in Asia. In view of the current global crisis and severe financial downturns, Asian economies are expected to experience a severe recession in 2009.     

Averting the construction skills crisis: a regional approach

The East Midlands construction industry is currently suffering from a severe skills shortage across its craft, professional and managerial occupations. The lack of available capacity within the regional labour market coupled with the poor image of the sector, call into question the industry's ability to cope with the levels of new orders and output growth predicted over the next few years. In this paper, it is argued that the casualised nature of the industry's labour market has rendered national, 'top-down' labour market policy measures ineffective in addressing the industry's skills concerns. This hypothesis has been explored through research that canvassed the opinions of key industry stakeholders as to the actions necessary to avert the region's skills crisis. This was achieved through a series of focus groups and workshops involving over 150 individuals with a vested interest in the region's construction skills situation. The insights emerging from the analysis suggested that bespoke regional and sub-regional labour market policies are required to avert the current skills shortage. The recommendations provided by the participants were used as the basis for a strategic package of measures that are currently being implemented across the region's five counties. This strategy aims to join-up hitherto disparate labour market measures within a single centrally coordinated framework. Nevertheless, overcoming the industry's fragmented structure remains an obstacle to resolving successfully the East Midlands' construction skills shortage.     

The assessment: knowledge, skills, and competitiveness

The autumn 1988 issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policyconsidered the UK's deficiencies in vocational education andtraining (VET). It was there that Finegold and Soskice firstpopularized the notion of the 'low skills/low quality' equilibrium.This Assessment introduces a range of articles which discussdevelopments in the decade that has passed since then. It arguesthat, despite massive policy initiatives, there has been onlylimited improvement in the UK's relative VET performance. Considerableprogress has been made in analysis of market failures affectingthe supply of skills, and in analysis of the possible causesand consequences of low employer demand for skills (systemsfailure). The recent Competitiveness White Paper reflects thisimproved understanding. However, there is still an imperfectappreciation of the nature of skills and of their contributionto the development of a more competitive, higher value-addedeconomy. The article ends by suggesting how progress might bemade on this front.     

Microelectronics,long waves and world structural change: New perspectives for developing countries

This article assesses the way in which emerging new technologies could enhance development prospects. To do this, it first presents a long-term view of the relationship between the techno-economic sphere and the socio-institutional framework, defining the present period as one of transition and structural change. It then outlines the main characteristics of the technological revolution based on microelectronics. It finally argues that these characteristics will offer a completely new range of opportunities for reshaping development strategies.     

Assessing convergence to purchasing power parity: A panel study for ten OECD countries

Assessing Convergence to Purchasing Power Parity: A Panel Study for 10 OECD Countries. — The paper analyzes whether post-Bretton Woods real exchange rates of ten OECD countries are nonstationary so that long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) can be considered to hold. A test procedure is proposed which treats the various real exchange rates as a panel but still allows to assess the rate of convergence to PPP for each pair of currencies separately. It is shown that long-run (tradables-) PPP holds between all countries analyzed. Rates of convergence to PPP, however, are found to be quite different across countries. For most of the OECD countries convergence takes place faster than previously indicated.     

Household satisfaction: Past,present and future perspectives

In the past two decades South African quality of life has been measured at the individual level in nationwide surveys and studies of special groups using happiness and satisfaction measures. In 1993 the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (Saldru) pioneered a satisfaction measure to capture subjective well‐being at the household level for the Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development (PSLSD). The article assesses the usefulness of the new indicator by comparing present household satisfaction with individual‐level satisfaction trends and with PSLSD measures of past and projected future satisfaction and household income and expenditure. It is concluded that the household satisfaction measure is a useful social indicator in that it yields consistent and readily interpretable results and is sensitive to income and expenditure differentials. In confirmation of findings from a recent cross‐national study, the higher income households in the Saldru study reported higher levels of perceived well‐being.     

Utilisation of administrative and research databases in government departments: Providing the platform for skills planning

ABSTRACT

A high-level audit of administrative databases was conducted in more than 20 national government departments or entities. The aim was to investigate the relevance of datasets within these databases to skills planning by the government aimed at harmonising skills supply and demand in South Africa. The audit revealed that datasets have different levels of relevance and usability. There are datasets that: are relevant and immediately usable; are highly relevant and require some preparation; contain relevant variables but are currently undergoing validation and cleaning before they can be utilised; and are in an early stage of evolution. Based on these observations, the authors furthermore explore how databases can be understood from an evolutionary perspective. This investigation provides evidence that, in the field of skills planning, the government is progressing through the early phases of e-government systems development by cataloguing data resources and preparing for transactions between data users and providers.     

Productivity,mechanization and skills: A test of the Hirschman hypothesis for Latin American industry

This paper attempts to test the paradoxical Hirschman hypothesis relating to the suitability of certain capital-intensive industries for less industrialized countries based on the ‘process-centred’ or ‘machine-paced’ nature of those industries which makes their productivity less dependent on the quality of local labour. Following extensive discussion of the methodology (e.g. problems of selection and specification of the variables explaining productivity differentials, and problems in specifying the appropriate variables to be explained), the author presents and analyses results for seven Latin American countries. These countries were chosen because of their more highly developed industrial structure, i.e. higher industrial value added per capita and a more diversified product mix, in order to provide a more severe test of the hypothesis. Although the results are not definitive, they seem to indicate that the industries which did better in relative productivity terms were those based on abundant local resources or of a traditional character on the whole; rather a reaffirmation of comparative advantage with little paradox.     

Assessing Vulnerability to Financial Crisis: Evidence from Indonesia

This paper examines the view that the recent Indonesian crisis was largely unforeseen. The broadest macroeconomic indicators were of virtually no help in presaging the crisis; neither were high-frequency financial indicators. But warnings were there, just below the surface, in some of the macro indicators and in certain structural weaknesses that were long recognised as threats to financial stability. That said, none of these warnings suggested crisis of the magnitude that eventually occurred. The Indonesian experience indicates that macroeconomic stability should never be taken for granted. Signs of vulnerability to financial instability include: the degree of reliance on gross private capital inflows (taking into account maturities and the implications for rollovers); the extent of unhedged foreign exchange positions; and certain indirect indicators, such as policy slippages and key personnel changes. Finally, in a world of volatile capital flows, crisis will tend to occur before standard economic data suggest that crisis is imminent.