Joining Global Production Networks: Experience and Prospects of India

Cross‐border dispersion of different stages/slices of the production processes within vertically integrated global industries (“global production sharing”) has been a key structural change in the global economy in recent decades. This paper examines India's experience with exploiting opportunities created by this phenomenon for export expansion from a comparative East Asian perspective. The analysis reveals that India has so far failed fitting into global production networks in electronics and electrical goods, which have been the prime movers of export dynamism in China and the other high‐performing East Asian countries. The findings of this study provide further support to the case for completing the unfinished reform agenda, encompassing both trade and investment policy reforms, and “behind‐the‐border” reforms. There is also a strong case, based on the experiences in East Asia and elsewhere, for combining further reforms with a proactive investment promotion campaign to attract multinational enterprises engaged in global production networks.     

Foreign Investment and Industrialization in Malaysia: Exports,Employment and Spillovers*

Over the past two decades, there has been a decisive shift in trade and industry policy in developing countries (DCs) away from import substitution and towards export-orientation. As part of this policy shift, an increasing number of DCs have become more receptive to foreign direct investment (FDI). Despite its policy relevance, the literature on the role of FDI in export expansion, employment generation and spillovers in DCs is sparse. This paper attempts to fill this gap through a case study of the role of export-oriented FDI in Malaysia's rapid industrialization. The overall conclusion of the paper is that export-oriented FDI has brought significant returns to Malaysia principally because the general economic climate has been favourable for the internationalization of production for a considerable period of time.     

Asian trade: long‐term patterns and key policy issues

Fragmentation‐based specialisation has become an integral part of the economic landscape of East Asia. Dependence on this new form of international specialisation is proportionately larger in East Asia, in particular in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, than in North America and Europe. In this regard, an important recent development has been the rapid integration of China into regional production networks. This development is a counterpoint to the popular belief that China's global integration would crowd out other countries' opportunities for international specialisation. The rise of product fragmentation has strengthened the case for a global, rather than a regional, approach to trade and investment policymaking. Given the global orientation of the region's economies, we question whether there would be a significant benefit from current efforts to promote regional cooperation, unless the principle of ‘open regionalism’ is recognised. With both the Doha Round and APEC floundering, this is one of the major multilateral policy challenges of our time.     

Australian–Thai Trade: Has the Free Trade Agreement Made a Difference?

This article examines the impact of the Thailand–Australia Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) on bilateral trade between the two countries, paying attention to the implications of rules of origin and the utilisation of tariff preferences. It is found that trade has expanded faster since TAFTA came into effect, but the impact has heavily concentrated in a few product lines in Australian imports from Thailand, reflecting the influence of commodity‐specific, supply‐side factors which have a bearing on the rate of preference utilisation. The findings, inter alia, suggest that the use of officially announced preference rates in trade flow modelling is likely to exaggerate trade flow effects of free trade agreements.     

Trade Policy Reforms and the Structure of Protection in Vietnam

This paper examines the current state of the trade policy regime in Vietnam against the backdrop of market‐oriented policy reforms undertaken over the past one‐and‐a‐half decades. The core of the paper is an in‐depth analysis of the structure of protection, focusing on both incentives for import‐competing production and the bias in the incentive structure against export production compared to import‐competing production. It is found that, despite notable reform efforts, the structure of protection in Vietnam is still out of line with that of the major trading nations in the region, in terms of the level and the inter‐industry dispersion of nominal and effective protection rates. There is a clear anti‐export bias in the incentive structure, even though the degree of the bias has considerably declined over the years. There is no evidence to justify the existing protection structure on grounds of infant industry protection or employment generation.     

Asian trade flows: Trends,patterns and prospects

Over the past four decades merchandise trade of developing Asian economies (DAEs) has grown at a much faster rate than growth in world trade, with a distinct intra-regional bias. Global production sharing has become a unique feature of the region's economic landscape, with China playing a pivotal complementary role as the premier assembly centre within regional production networks. According to the projections made using the standard gravity model of international trade, total real non-oil trade of DAEs would increase at an annual rate of 8.2 percent during the next three decades, with a notable convergence of individual countries’ rates to the regional average. The share of intra-regional trade in total nonoil trade would increase steadily from 53 percent in 2010 to 58 percent in 2030. The trade-to-GDP ratio would increase from 39.4 percent and 74.4 percent between these two years.     

Determinants of Health Costs due to Farmers’ Exposure to Pesticides: An Empirical Analysis

Pesticide spraying by farmers has an adverse impact on their health. However, in studies to date examining farmers’ exposure to pesticides, the costs of ill health and their determinants have been based on information provided by farmers themselves. Some doubt has therefore been cast on the reliability of these estimates. In this study, we address this by conducting surveys among two groups of farmers who use pesticides on a regular basis. The first group is made up of farmers who perceive that their ill health is due to exposure to pesticides and have obtained at least some form of treatment (described in this article as the ‘general farmer group’). The second group is composed of farmers whose ill health has been diagnosed by doctors and who have been treated in hospital for exposure to pesticides (described here as the ‘hospitalised farmer group’). Cost comparisons are made between the two groups of farmers. Regression analysis of the determinants of health costs show that the most important determinants of medical costs for both samples are the defensive expenditure, the quantity of pesticides used per acre per month, frequency of pesticide use and number of pesticides used per hour per day. The results have important policy implications.     

The impact of regulatory change on EU energy utility returns: the three liberalization packages

The European Union’s (EU) energy sector is changing due to major policy reforms. In this article, we examine the impact of major legislative changes which were designed to induce competition in the energy sector: the three liberalization packages. Competition was expected to benefit the industry by phasing out inefficient firms. EU citizens were also expected to benefit as competition was likely to promote a more efficient energy sector and more consumer choice of energy products and services. However, this legislative change occurred during a period of extreme market turmoil. We examine the impact of all these changes on the risk profile of the sector. Our results show that the liberalization legislation significantly increased systematic risk exposure of the sector, reducing its role as a defensive investment asset. We also show that commodities had relatively little impact on sector returns, but this was expected as utilities can offset commodity risk in hedging markets. We compare our results to those obtained in neighbouring EU sectors and find the impacts are isolated to the energy sector. This article makes a major contribution to energy policy by empirically showing the change in risk as a result of sector liberalization.     

The small country assumption: A reassessment with evidence from Korea

Zusammenfassung Die Annahme eines ⋯kleinen Landes”. Eine überprüfung mit Daten aus Korea. — Es gibt kaum ?konometrische Belege für ⋯kleine” L?nder im Welthandel, weil das übliche Vorgehen bei der Sch?tzung von Parametern für die Exportnachfrage es ausschlie\t, Befunde für ein ⋯kleines” Land zu ermitteln. Die Verfasser entwickeln deshalb ein alternatives Verfahren, wobei die inverse Nachfragefunktion als Teil eines Systems der Exportangebots- und Exportnachfragefunktionen gesch?tzt wird, und wenden es auf den Fall koreanischer Maschinen und Transportmittel an. Dieses Verfahren liefert Ergebnisse, die statistisch besser und einleuchtender sind als diejenigen, die sich aus der traditionellen Methode der Sch?tzung von Exportnachfrageparametern ergeben.

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Resumen El supuesto de país peque?o: un nuevo análisis con evidencia de Corea. — Casi no existe evidencia en favor de paises peque?os en el comercio mundial. Esto se debe a que el enfoque convencional para estimar los parámetros de la demanda de exportaciones excluye la posibilidad de encontrar evidencia de un país peque?o. Se desarrolla un enfoque alternativo estimando la función inversa de demanda como parte de un sistema de funciones de demanda y oferta de exportaciones y se lo aplica al caso de maquinaria y equipo de transporte coreanos. Este enfoque arroja resultados estadísticamente superiores y con más sentido que aquellos derivados del enfoque convencional para estimar los parámetros de la demanda de exportaciones.

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Résumé La supposition d’un ?petit? pays: la réévaluation avec l’évidence de la Corée. — Il n’y a presque aucune évidence économétrique des ?petits? pays au commerce international. La raison est que l’approche conventionnelle pour estimer les paramètres de la demande d’exportation ne tient pas compte de trouver l’évidence d’un ?petit? pays. Dans l’article, on développe une méthode alternative: on estime la fonction de la demande inverse comme part d’un système des fonctions de l’offre et de la demande d’exportations et on l’applique au cas de l’équipement en machines et en transport en Corée. Cette méthode aboutit aux résultats qui sont statistiquement meilleurs que ceux dérivés de l’approche conventionnelle pour estimer les paramètres de la demande d’exportations.