Fiscal Policy in Southeast Asia

Monetary policy was ineffective in dealing with the 1997 Asian macroeconomic crisis. Fiscal policy might have been more effective but was not considered for a variety of reasons.     

云南与东南亚南亚开展技术转移对策研究

技术转移是促进技术进步、加快产业发展的重要手段.文章分析了云南省与东南亚、南亚开展技术转移的优势和条件,提出了开展技术转移的总体思路与策略.在此基础上,从加强宏观管理与设计、完善技术转移服务体系以及优化技术转移环境等方面提出了相应的对策措施.     

Accounting for Recent Economic Growth in Southeast Asia

This paper identifies the major factors explaining GDP growth in a number of Southeast Asian countries during the 1980s and early 90s. Estimates of the contribution of technological change, increases in the endowments of labor and capital, movements in the terms of trade, and changes in domestic output prices are reported for Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. Partial results for Indonesia and Malaysia are also shown. An index number approach is used; it has a tight theoretical foundation, being based on the GNP/GDP function approach to modeling the production sector of an open economy.     

Fiscal Policy in Australia and Southeast Asia: An Overview

Ian M. McDonald introduces a Policy Forum on Fiscal Policy in Australia and Southeast Asia . In this Policy Forum two papers focus on the fiscal policy of the Howard Government. A third paper considers the role of fiscal policy in the currency crisis in Southeast Asia.     

Financial crisis in Southeast Asia: dispelling illusion the Minskyan way

This paper extends Minsky's financial instability hypothesisto the case of the open, ‘liberalised’, economy,making it possible to put forward a specifically Minskyan accountof the road to the financial crisis in Southeast Asia (1997/1998).The analysis suggests that the threats to growth and employmentemanating from the financial sector which Minsky identifiedin the closed economy setting are much intensified in open,liberalised, developing economies. Financial liberalisationis an important key factor in this process. Rival explanationsof the crisis are examined and rejected in favour of the extendedMinskyan explanation. The policy implications are derived anddiscussed.     

中国与东南亚农业合作展望

中国与东南亚发展农业合作潜力巨大,中国与东南亚的农业合作已处于起步阶段,并取得了一定的成绩,但仍存在一些问题,中国与东南亚的农业合作有待于进一步发展,加强双边的农业合作可以通过加强制度合作,最大程度利用现有资源来进行.     

对我国企业投资东南亚、南亚考察研究

本文所指东南亚包括越南、老挝、柬埔寨、缅甸、泰国、马来西亚、新加坡、印度尼西亚、文莱、菲律宾10国,南亚包括巴基斯坦、印度、孟加拉国、斯里兰卡4国,它们作为我国政府始终重视的境外投资区域在“走出去”战略中具有举足轻重的地位。对国内企业在该地区投资的现实状况和发展中存在的主要问题进行科学系统的研究,尤其是细致剖析境外投资的国别地域特征、投资主体的投资决策模式、境外企业的微观运行机理和制度障碍,对企业和政府都具有重大的决策参考意义。本文作者有针对性地选取了对东南亚、南亚投资较多的五个典型地区——广东、浙江、上海、江苏、山东5省(市)作为实证分析的样本采集点,综合运用问卷、实地考察和座谈三种形式,对42家国内企业进行了境外投资调查,得出系列结论与判断。希望引起业界关注。     

东南亚地区的跨国并购现状与影响

一、东南亚地区跨国并购概况 20世纪90年代初以来,全球范围内的跨国并购不断发展,并成为外国直接投资(FDI)的主要形式.联合国贸发会议(UNCTAD)的统计结果显示,跨国并购特别是发达国家公司的并购驱动了外国直接投资的近期增长.     

Climate Change and Regional Vulnerability to Transnational Security Threats in Southeast Asia

Transnational and non-state threats including international organized crime, terrorism, illicit trafficking (in drugs, wildlife, humans, arms, etc.), piracy, infectious disease, and illegal migration flows are major concerns in Southeast Asia. This paper examines IPCC projections for climate change to the region and discusses possible impacts of these changes upon transnational security. Overall, climate change could increase potential vulnerability to various transnational security threats. Southeast Asian livelihood and social systems will be pressured, while state and civil society capacity will be strained. This will intensify existing vulnerabilities to non-state security threats and raise the overall level of vulnerability and risk to both human and state security. Predicted climate change impacts are also likely to strengthen or help revive sub-state networks that have traditionally responded to environmental change and pressure via violence, crime, smuggling, banditry, trafficking, terrorism, and other such activities. This will contribute to the evolution, expansion, and growth of “new” war fighting groups while raising overall vulnerability to non-state threats from local to global scales.     

Female first marriage in East and Southeast Asia: a Kiefer-Neumann model

Many studies have shown that schooling levels of husband and wife are important determinants of household behavior in developing countries. This article asks how the schooling levels of husband and wife come to be associated with each other through the marriage market. The Kiefer-Neumann model of labor market search is adapted to marital search, the aim being to explain both the positive sorting on educational levels for spouses, and the positive relationship between female schooling and age at 1st marriage. World Fertility Survey data for Indonesia, Korea, and Malaysia are employed in the analyses.     

我国劳动力效率对东南亚经济发展影响的实证研究

构造了劳动力负荷相关因子模型,并通过相关数量分析研究,认为东亚经济的蓬勃发展归功于劳动力的释放,然而老年负荷和儿童负荷的影响作用不一样。收入增加因素、劳动力供给因素、公共财政机制等多种因素使得东亚人口劳动力的负荷运转有所减缓;但以后的劳动力负荷是未知数,对未来的经济增长也会造成冲击。     

Herding behaviour and the declining value relevance of accounting information: evidence from an emerging stock market

This article sheds light on the underlying mechanisms behind the changes in the value relevance of accounting information in the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) during the 1999–2010 period. We find that neither changes in earnings quality nor the earnings lack of timeliness hypothesis can explain the decline in the value relevance of accounting information in the KSE. Based on the stylized facts associated with the growth of the KSE and the broader economics literature, we argue that the reduction in the explanatory power of accounting information vis-à-vis stock returns was caused by herding behaviour. Empirical estimates from state-space model of herding behaviour confirm the existence of herding, and we find that the value relevance of accounting information is significantly lower in periods characterized by herding behaviour. This article is also amongst the first attempts to empirically demonstrate that an expansionary monetary policy and increases in foreign portfolio investment lead to increased levels of herding.     

Nonlinearities in emerging stock markets: evidence from Europe's two largest emerging markets

Recent developments in time series analysis allow proper modelling of nonlinearities in economic and financial variables. A growing body of research was dedicated to investigation of potential nonlinearities in conditional mean of many economic and financial variables, mainly concentrating in developed economies. However, nonlinearities in financial variables in developing economies have not been fully examined yet. In this article we investigate potential nonlinearity and cyclical behaviour of stock returns in Europe's two largest emerging stock markets, mainly in the Greek and Turkish stock markets. Specifically, we use STAR family models, which allow to model nonlinearities in the conditional mean, for modelling monthly returns on stock exchange indices of the Athens Stock Exchange and Istanbul Stock Exchange. Although we find no nonlinearity in conditional variance, we do find strong evidence in favour of nonlinear adjustment of stock returns. It is found that allowing for nonlinearity in conditional mean results in a superior model and provides good out-of-sample forecasts, which contradicts to efficient market hypothesis.     

The innovation performance of MNE subsidiaries and local embeddedness: evidence from an emerging economy

We examine the innovation performance of MNE subsidiaries and their embeddedness in sources of local knowledge in a policy framework within the context of an emerging economy. Based on first-hand evidence from multiple case studies, we found that: (1) there was variability between the subsidiaries in terms of the cumulative manner and speed at which they improved their innovation performance over time, using progressively levels of accumulated capability as a proxy; (2) these differences in innovation performance improvement reflected heterogeneity between the subsidiaries in terms of the learning efforts made to acquire knowledge from local organizations; (3) the varied frequency in which the subsidiaries developed such local relationships reflects their differing responses to a common industrial policy that makes use of tax incentives to stimulate such links. The paper reveals the limitations of this conventional type of industrial policy in stimulating industrial development and the embeddedness of MNEs. It also suggests that a new direction for policy, which incorporates public–private negotiations and a focus on the firm-centred building of innovation capabilities, should be pursued in order to accelerate the innovation performance progress of latecomer firms.     

Inflation targeting in emerging economies: Panel evidence

This paper shows there is no evidence that the inflation targeting regime (IT) improves economic performance as measured by the behavior of inflation and output growth in developing countries. The control of common time effects results in less negative and less significant IT impacts on inflation, inflation volatility and output growth volatility than previously found in the literature. Additionally, our analysis shows robust evidence of lower output growth during IT adoption. On balance, although lower long-run mean inflation signals that the central banks of emerging economies with inflation targeting are more inflation-averse, the costs of disinflation have not been lower than under other monetary regimes.     

Examining the relationship between stock return volatility and trading volume: new evidence from an emerging economy

Using daily stock return data for individual stocks from an emerging economy, this article examines the relationship between return volatility and trading volume under the theoretical postulate of the mixture of distributions hypothesis. The results suggest that the contemporaneous trading volume as a proxy for latent information arrival to the market did not contribute to the removal of significant ARCH or Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity effects that are found in stocks at the first stage of the investigation. The same holds for the lagged volume except for one case. This, perhaps, suggests that the trading volume (contemporaneous or lagged) is not adequately conveying information to induce traders’ views of the desirability of trade and, therefore, points to the need for searching for other micro and macro variables to be used as potential proxy for information arrival to the stock market of the emerging economy.     

Reassessing the ins and outs of unemployment

This paper uses readily accessible aggregate time series to measure the probability that an employed worker becomes unemployed and the probability that an unemployed worker finds a job, the ins and outs of unemployment. Since 1948, the job finding probability has accounted for three-quarters of the fluctuations in the unemployment rate in the United States and the employment exit probability for one-quarter. Fluctuations in the employment exit probability are quantitatively irrelevant during the last two decades. Using the underlying microeconomic data, the paper shows that these results are not due to compositional changes in the pool of searching workers, nor are they due to movements of workers in and out of the labor force. These results contradict the conventional wisdom that has guided the development of macroeconomic models of the labor market since 1990.     

东南亚区域合作与与中国西南边疆发展战略

本文论述中国及其西南边疆与东南亚各国合作,建立了中国一东盟自由贸易区,建立了大湄公河次区域合作机制,取得了成效。本文指出中国及其西南边疆与东南亚各国区域合作存在的主要问题,并提出对策。     

Corporate governance and efficiency in banking: evidence from emerging economies

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the impact of corporate governance on bank efficiency across a sample of 139 commercial banks from 17 countries of Central and Eastern Europe during the period 2005–2012. Data on governance characteristics are hand-collected from banks’ reports. The empirical findings indicate that implementing rigorous corporate governance structures is associated with higher costs for banks and a lower level of efficiency. However, during the crisis, a tight governance mechanism significantly increases banks’ cost and technical efficiencies. We also show that prudent risk management is associated with both higher cost and technical efficiency for more capitalized banks, while rigid supervisory boards are linked with greater technical efficiency for more capitalized banks.