Understanding the ASEAN economic community: pragmatism versus conceptualism

ABSTRACT

The ASEAN Economic Community, born in 2003 and developed over the next 12 years, aims to build a ‘single market’ whilst ‘enhancing the production base’ in ASEAN for global and regional value-chains. The paper attempts to understand the AEC via a conceptual as well as a pragmatic approach. It summarizes achievements up to 2015 and assesses the 2025 Blueprint in some detail. At times the latter reads like a Roadmap full of details but measures often remain open-ended or somewhat vague, a typical ASEAN characteristic. What ultimately matters to ASEAN is economic growth and the AEC may well serve as a handmaiden to sustained high growth.     

Measuring Corporate Social Performance in France: A Critical and Empirical Analysis of ARESE Data

This article studies the idea of Corporate Social Performance (CSP) from a critical perspective using empirical elements derived from analysis of year 2000 ARESE data. ARESE is the French first mover social rating agency providing quantified data about the Social Performance of French companies. The paper starts out by reviewing leading CSP models and discussing problems inherent to the measurement of this construct before going on to present and analyse ARESE data - whose suitability for existing models will be discussed.     

Subsidiarity in the European Union

Against the backdrop of the highly controversial debate on the future competences of the different European institutions, the principle of subsidiarity, a fundamental principle of European Union law, has recently met with renewed interest. The contributions to this Forum discuss a number of pertinent issues.

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*A longer version of this article is to be found in H. Tomann (ed.): Die Rolle der europ?ischen Institutionen in der Wirtschaftspolitik, Baden-Baden 2006, Nomos, pp. 59-76.     

EU enlargement: External economic implications

The coming eastward enlargement of the EU has not prompted much debate about its external economic implications, quite in contrast to the fierce debates which accompanied previous enlargements. This article discusses the main economic effects of the CEECs' move from “association” to EU membership, and in particular the external impacts with respect to agriculture, industry and FDI. It also deals with the somewhat sensitive subject of US-CEEC bilateral investment treaties, as well as the prospects for catch-up growth by the accession countries.     

MEASURING THE DIVERSITY OF HOUSEHOLD SPENDING PATTERNS

Households tend to diversify their spending across a wide range of goods and services as they become more affluent. Recently, there has been growing interest in understanding the precise manner in which this spending diversification process takes place. We review what facts are known about this process and the underlying behavioural tendencies that are thought to drive it. In addition, we clarify the relationship between different approaches to measuring the level of spending diversity. A number of indices are employed, including measures based on joint probabilities, distances and the concept of entropy. Using UK household spending data, we show the extent to which these measures deliver different results and shed light on the nature of behavioural heterogeneity.     

WORLD IMBALANCES AND MACROECONOMIC ADJUSTMENTS: A THREE‐COUNTRY STOCK‐FLOW CONSISTENT MODEL WITH FIXED OR FLEXIBLE PRICES

World macroeconomic adjustments are analysed with a three‐country Stock‐Flow Consistent (SFC) models. Three SFC models are considered, the first one with a fixed dollar–yuan parity including a version with Chinese foreign reserves' diversification, the second with a flexible dollar–yuan parity which can be freely floating or following a more managed float, the third one being a generalization of the two others with flexible prices instead of constant prices. The fixity of the dollar–yuan parity limits the adjustments facing shocks and world imbalances while a more flexible dollar–yuan exchange rate appears as a powerful adjustment mechanism to reduce these imbalances.     

Street-lighting projects selection: A rational decision making approach

The study presented in this paper represents a new and fresh approach to the problem of efficiently and optimally allocating scarce resources in the provision of public services—namely, street-lighting. The methodology developed is aimed at introducing more systematic and rational thinking in a way which is both technically and politically feasible. To the best of the author's knowledge, the study presents, for the first time, a procedure for the comprehensive quantitative estimate of the utility accruing from street-lighting. The utility value derived from each street-lighting project depends upon several factors, some of which can be technically assessed and others estimated only by subjective values.

In order to deduce the subjective values, the Delphi method was employed. This method permits derivation of subjective values for groups of interviewees whose assessments may reasonably be assumed to be crucial in determining the relative values of the objectives of the utility function. Those components of the utility function representing subjective values were identified and estimated.

The conventional practice, whereby residents have no explicit say in the planning of the lighting system in their city, was abandoned. Residents' value judgements concerning the relative importance of the objectives to be gained by the lighting system were incorporated into the planning process. An optimization model based on an integer programming algorithm was employed because it permits periodic (e.g. annual) selection of a set of indivisible projects to be realized during a given period. This enables maximum economic and social utility to be derived, subject to budgetary and technological constraints.

The selection process was extended and deepened so as to render it sensitive to benefit from economies of scale and external economies. The optimization process was carried out with the use of an IBM-MPS X (an integer programming algorithm). The methodology was applied to a large and diverse quarter in the city of Jerusalem that is divided into seven semi-homogeneous neighborhoods—in terms of their physical as well as their socio-economic and demographic characteristics. This represents a very different approach when compared to the conventional way in which the planning design and installation of street-lighting projects are currently carried out.