Do oil price changes really matter to the trade balance? Evidence from Korea-ASEAN commodity trade data

The contribution of this article is to assess the effect of oil prices have on the trade balance in the framework of bilateral commodity trade data between Korea and each of the four ASEAN member countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. To examine this subject thoroughly, we first assume the effects of oil price changes to be symmetric and apply the linear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method to the subject. We find that the price of crude oil indeed has an important role in affecting Korea's trade balance with those four ASEAN economies in both the long- and short-run. We then separate oil price hikes from oil price plunges and implement the nonlinear ARDL method to reveal that there is evidence that changes in oil prices appear to have asymmetric effects on the trade balance for certain products in the long- and short-run.     

Do real exchange rates really follow threshold autoregressive or exponential smooth transition autoregressive models?

Nonlinear models, especially threshold autoregressive [TAR] and exponential smooth transition autoregressive [ESTAR] classes, are widely applied for modeling real exchange rates in order to examine the validity of purchasing power parity [PPP]. Even though the nonlinear models are theoretically well-motivated, some of the recent findings cast doubts on their relevance for real exchange rates. In particular, the nonlinear models do not necessarily yield improved out-of-sample forecasts over linear models and add little value in resolving the well-documented PPP puzzle. Utilizing a nonparametric entropy measure of dependence proposed by Granger et al. (2004), we show, in this study, that the real exchange rates from four major countries had exhibited quite strong nonlinear serial dependence, which linear autoregressive models fail to replicate. Furthermore, the nonlinear TAR and ESTAR models estimated for the real exchange rates also have some difficulty in generating significant serial dependence structure actually observed in the data. Overall, other nonlinear models than the currently entertained TAR and ESTAR should be considered to study the dynamics of the real exchange rates.     

Panel estimates of a two-tiered earnings frontier

This paper uses panel data to estimate a two-tiered instead of a one-tiered frontier model. The innovation is to develop a two-step maximum likelihood procedure yielding consistent estimates of inefficiency, while at the same time accounting for heterogeneity. The model is applied by estimating a ‘two-tiered’ earnings function to obtain indices of worker and firm incomplete labour market wage information using panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1969–84). The estimation preserves the traditional quadratic age-earnings profile, but measures the extent to which employers often pay more than necessary to hire a worker (incomplete employer information), while at the same time, employees often accept wages less than they could otherwise command (incomplete employee information). The results indicate that employees acquire less information than employers. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE IMPACT OF LOCAL FISCAL AND MIGRATION POLICIES ON HUMAN CAPITAL ACCUMULATION AND INEQUALITY IN CHINA

We develop and estimate a spatial overlapping generations model with heterogeneous households to study the feasibility of a recently proposed reform of internal migration policies that offers the potential of decreasing inequality within China. We find that this policy change significantly increases the college attainment of migrant children born in rural areas and, therefore, promises to increase the number of high-skill workers. However, it requires significant tax increases to offset the reduction of the positive fiscal externalities provided by migrants.     

Triple helix dynamics of South Korea’s innovation system: a network analysis of inter-regional technological collaborations

This study intends to unveil the current innovation landscape of South Korea in an attempt to examine the underlying patterns of inter-regional technology collaboration occurring at the triple helix level. Social network analysis techniques are used to quantify the structure of the four types of inter-provincial co-inventorship network between university, industry, and government (UIG). The findings confirm the declining centrality of Seoul as the primary research center with the emergence of new regional players such as Gyeonggi and Daejeon. However, they also reveal that these three main innovative regions have become strongly linked in recent years and constitute the core of the inter-regional collaboration networks. The poor linkage between the research core and the periphery, in turn, raises some concerns regarding the unfair geographical concentration of innovation resources and technology activities, hindering the synergy in the national and regional innovation systems. To create a dynamic innovative milieu for bolstering Korea’s national innovation system, therefore, interactive learning between the core and the periphery, as well as between the various UIG actors, must be further facilitated.     

Urban Land Development and its Prices: The Effects of Conversion Costs with Redevelopment

This paper analyzes urban land development when landowners anticipate a future large-scale redevelopment by a third party developer. Landowners' initial development activities can deter such redevelopment because they impose two conversion costs on the redeveloper: demolition costs and landowners' reservation prices. These costs are eventually borne by the landowners when the developers' market is competitive. For the landowners' initial development activities, we analyze both the efficient solution and the noncooperative solution under the Nash equilibrium. In both cases, the possibility of redevelopment results in a lower level of initial development due to the conversion costs, but increases land prices. However, the magnitude of their effects is smaller in the Nash solution due to an externality. The presence of such an externality provides a rationale for zoning and urban planning.     

“新中企业合作已逐步走向服务业”

东盟-中国自由贸易区在2010年1月1日全面启动,对双边贸易发展帮助很大,并将进一步加强双边贸易关系。东盟与中国保持良好与繁荣的发展是符合新加坡利益的,我们将致力于促进这种关系的发展。虽然我们不能发挥领导作用,但我们可以贡献自己的想法。地处亚洲中心的战略位置,以及语言和文化环境,使新加坡成为连接中国和东盟的天然枢纽和跳板。     

Empirically testing ES success factors in business process reengineering

Previously proposed success factors for Expert Systems implementation are field tested in the context of business process reengineering (BPR) projects. Due to its nature mimicking human expert behavior, ES technology applications in BPR provide a unique opportunity to study major organization changes within a relatively short time. Using Pearson correlations and multivariate regression analysis, eight ES implementation success factors proposed in the literature were empirically tested in this study in terms of their importance to the BPR benefits derived from the application. Sixty-two ES applications within E.I. Dupont de Nemours and Company dealing with business process changes significant enough to be called BPR were used. Despite the relatively small sample size, six of the eight success factors were corroborated: user satisfaction with the ES, the importance and difficulty of the business problem addressed, user attitudes toward ES technology and the particular ES project, the degree of user involvement in the ES implementation process, and the ES developer(s) skills.