Multilateralism,Regionalism, Bilateral and Crossregional Free Trade Arrangements: All Paved with Good Intentions for ASEAN?

Current initiatives in Asia and Asia Pacific regionalism are responses to regionalism happening elsewhere in the context of globalization, information communication technology and knowledge-based economy. The conclusion is that many economies are 'having it both ways' in multilateralism under World Trade Organization (WTO) and new regionalism. The argument is that the 'first best' theory of free trade under multilateralism and WTO have fallen short. A 'second best' theory of new regionalism has been acknowledged by the Doha ministerial declaration to complement and supplement WTO. Both Asia challenged Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) are challenged by ASEAN Plus Three (APT), which originated from the Asian crisis in the failed Asian Monetary Fund (AMF).
  Singapore has responded to these challenges in bilateral trading agreements, driven by its idiosyncratic features of a small, city–state economy and frustrated by laggard ASEAN. Increasingly, there is a divergence in macroeconomic policy between Singapore and ASEAN in terms of openness and competition. The dilemma in Singapore's strategy of bilateral trading agreements and foreign economic trade policy is precisely this divergence in macroeconomic philosophy and policy. The pressure on ASEAN is no less from APT, China and regionalism elsewhere than from Singapore. However, the present paper concedes that bilateral and crossregional trading arrangements are still second best, and that broader regionalism and multilateralism are still superior. With so many regional trading arrangements and emerging competition policy there may be rules of origin or 'spaghetti bowl' effects for Singapore. In 'realpolitiks' and real political economy, the balancing of gains and benefits is not easy.     

Differential total factor productivity in the Four Dragons: the Singapore case

This paper introduces a concept of a latent resource to explain the seemingly low total factor productivity estimated for Singapore. It found that total factor productivity growth in the economy is not as dismal as estimated in other studies if the factor shares used in the computation are nearer to those of developed industrialized economies. The existence of a latent resource also explains the discrepancy in factor shares reported in published information as compared to the empirically derived figures. From this, the policy implication is that measures to maintain the latent resource become important for the Singapore economy to remain internationally competitive.     

Who knows more about future currency volatility?

We use four currency pairs from October 1, 2001 to September 29, 2006 to compare the predictive power of the implied volatility derived from currency option prices that are traded on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX), Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), and over‐the‐counter market (OTC). Among the competing implied volatility forecasts, OTC‐implied volatility subsumes the information content of PHLX‐ and CME‐implied volatility. Consistent with extant studies our result also shows that the implied volatility provides more information about future volatility–regardless of whether it is from the OTC, PHLX, or CME markets–than time series based volatility. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:270–295, 2009     

Scientific muddling: Decision making through a Lindblomian lens

This introduction reviews the history and core principles of Charles Lindblom's concept of muddling and its application across a wide array of business decisions. The approach recognizes certain decisions as sequential, strategic practices and thus finds applications in a wide variety of business decisions. This article provides a brief summary of the 15 contributions that follow and take up on this theme. The authors extend a note of appreciation to the reviewers of the papers in the issue and to the editor of Journal of Business Research, Arch Woodside.     

全球低碳经济潮流与中国的响应对策

基于对目前全球面临的经济危机和气候变化危机及其共同根源的分析,作者认为低碳经济成为破解这一双重危机的必然选择,协调经济发展与保护全球气候推动全球形成低碳经济发展潮流。全球低碳经济潮流在近期表现为绿色复苏,从长期而言,将推动新的全球竞争格局,具体表现为激烈的国际政治、经济、技术、贸易、金融竞争。全球低碳经济潮流对中国的影响不容忽视,它既是对中国现状的挑战,也是中国未来的发展机遇。通过对中国、美国、欧盟与日本的低碳经济进行比较研究,作者提出中国应走有中国特色的低碳发展道路,并分别从国家、企业与社会公众层面提出了中国应对全球低碳经济潮流的发展对策。     

Impact of Culture, Market Forces, and Legal System on Financial Disclosures

This study examines the impact of legal systems (LSs) on financial disclosures by firms from different countries. The results indicate that firms from common law countries are associated with higher financial disclosures compared to firms from code law countries. The findings also reveal that cultural values have an insignificant impact on financial disclosures by firms from common law countries, and the results on firms from code law countries provide mixed signals. The results for multinationals are similar to the results for the total sample. The cultural values have no impact on financial disclosures of multinationals from common law countries, and there are mixed signals for multinationals from code law countries.     

Export subsidies and trade policy: The experience of Kenya

This paper finds that manufacturing firms in Kenya have responded poorly to the availability of export subsidies. It is argued that this has resulted from the delays and uncertainty surrounding disbursement procedures, and from the limited extent to which the subsidy lessened the anti-export bias of a policy structure which has emphasized import substitution. It is further argued that a budgetary constraint makes it impossible to offset the anti-export bias with export subsidies at existing levels of domestic market protection, and that what is required is the lowering and standardization of domestic market protection levels, which can be most appropriately achieved through a combination of devaluation and trade tax/subsidy changes.