Understanding India's Regional Initiatives with East and Southeast Asia

In recent years, India has concluded several bilateral and regional agreements with countries in East and Southeast Asia. This paper discusses four motivating factors underlying these initiatives: (i) the recognition by other Asian countries of India's growing importance as an investment and export market, as a supplier of manpower, and as a counterbalance to China's growing regional dominance; (ii) India's recognition of Asia's growing importance in the world economy; (iii) India's desire to prevent its marginalisation and to create a sphere of political and economic influence within East and Southeast Asia; and (iv) geo-political considerations such as securing energy interests, and addressing transport and connectivity concerns and long-term political and sub-regional stability objectives. India's approach to these integration efforts has been largely defensive and its future integration initiatives are likely to be more geo-political and strategic in nature.     

Convergence (and divergence) in the biological standard of living in the USA, 1820–1900

Standard economic indicators suggest that the USA experienced long-run economic growth throughout the nineteenth century. However, biological indicators, including human stature, offer a different picture, rising early in the century, falling (on average) mid-century, and rising again at the end of the century. This pattern varied across geographical regions. Using a unique data set, consisting of mean adult stature by state, we test for convergence in stature among states in the nineteenth century. We find that during the period of declining mean stature (1820–1870), heights actually diverged. Later in the century (1870–1890) we find a type of “negative” convergence indicating that stature among states tended to converge to a new, lower steady state. Only towards the end of the century (1880–1900) do we find classic convergence behavior. We argue that the diversity of economic experiences across regions, including urbanization, industrialization, and transportation improvements, explain this pattern of divergence and then convergence.

Does food market modernisation lead to improved dietary diversity and diet quality for urban Vietnamese households?

This study investigates the possible mechanisms through which modern food markets may affect Vietnamese households’ dietary diversity and diet quality using data from a survey of 1,700 urban households with seven‐day food recall. We calculate Household Dietary Diversity Scores to measure dietary diversity, and use consumption frequencies of micronutrients (vitamin A and heme iron) and a macronutrient (protein) to create a household measure of diet quality. We estimate a Poisson regression model using a two‐step control function approach to address the potential endogeneity of our key explanatory variable, modern market food expenditure shares. Higher modern market food expenditure share is positively and significantly associated with consumption frequency of heme iron, but there are no significant associations with consumption of vitamin A and protein. We further explore indirect linkages between food expenditure shares and dietary diversity, which in turn, may be linked to household diet quality. Results from a system of equations show that the food expenditure share variable has no significant relationship with dietary diversity, but dietary diversity is positively and significantly associated with diet quality. Our results indicate that alone, policies which encourage ‘food market modernisation’ are not enough to improve diet quality in urban Vietnam.     

Gender specific effects of exports on work decisions in Indonesia

This paper proposes a new household panel data approach to study the gender specific effects of exports on labor force participation and household work.We construct a novel measure, the Export Exposure index, by combining information about exports and the respondent's location. The index enables us to address a key identification issue, which is to estimate the effect of exports that is unconfounded by unobserved household characteristics and macroeconomic shocks. We construct a simple model to show that if women have a comparative disadvantage in market work relative to men, and if an increase in exports increases the gender wage gap, Labor force participation of the women would be negatively related to exports. We find that in Indonesia, exports encourage women to substitute their time away from paid labor participation towards unpaid house or family work, but have no statistically significant effect on men, as predicted by our model.     

WHAT DETERMINES RELIGIOUS SCHOOL CHOICE? THEORY AND EVIDENCE FROM RURAL BANGLADESH

This paper looks at the determinants of school selection in rural Bangladesh, focusing on the choice between registered Islamic and non‐religious schools. Using a unique dataset on secondary school‐age children from rural Bangladesh, we find that madrasah enrolment falls as household income increases. At the same time, more religious households, and those that live further away from a non‐religious school are more likely to send their children to madrasahs. However, in contrast to the theory, we find that Islamic school demand does not respond to the average quality of schools in the locality.     

Anatomy of banking crises in developing and emerging market countries

This paper uses a Binary Classification Tree (BCT) model to analyze banking crises in 50 emerging market and developing countries during 1990-2005. The BCT model identifies three conditions (and the specific threshold of the key indictors) at which the vulnerability to banking crisis increases—(i) very high inflation, (ii) highly dollarized bank deposits combined with nominal depreciation or low bank liquidity, and (iii) low bank profitability—which highlight that foreign currency risk, poor financial soundness, and macroeconomic instability are important drivers of banking crises. The results also emphasize the importance of conditional thresholds in triggering crises, in that banking crises are underlined by a combination of vulnerabilities—or a sequence of (non-linear) conditions—rather than the deterioration of a unique factor.     

Managing diversity through human resource management: an international perspective and conceptual framework

This paper critically reviews the literature on managing diversity through human resource management (HRM). We discuss the major issues and objectives of managing diversity and examine the state of human resource diversity management practices in organizations. Our review shows that inequality and discrimination still widely exist and HRM has focused mainly on compliance with equal employment opportunity (EEO) and affirmative action (AA) legislation. Less attention has been paid to valuing, developing and making use of diversity. Our review reveals limited literature examining how diversity is managed in organizations through effective human resource management. We develop a framework that presents strategies for HR diversity management at the strategic, tactical and operational levels. Our review also discusses the implications for practice and further research.     

Early Starts,Reversals and Catch‐up in the Process of Economic Development*

Early states like China and India have been experiencing more rapid economic growth in recent decades. We show that more rapid growth by early starters has been the norm in economic history, and that the “reversal of fortune” associated with the European overseas expansion was both exceptional and temporary. Not only was the post‐1500 reversal in the process of being reversed after 1960, but also the advantage conferred by early development in the latter period was considerably greater than the growth rate disadvantage that it conferred during 1500–1960, implying a rapid undoing of the first reversal.     

Movement of Natural Persons and the GATS

Trade in services has expanded considerably in recent years, However, numerous regulatory barriers constrain such trade, especially when it involves the temporary cross-border movement of labour, also termed, movement of natural persons. Many developing countries have the potential to export services through cross-border movement of professional, semi-skilled and unskilled labour. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) seeks to progressively liberalise trade in services via different modes of supply, including the movement of natural persons. Under the first round of GATS negotiations, member countries have made sectoral and cross-sectoral commitments to promote trade in services for these different modes of supply. This paper discusses the significance of and various constraints to the movement of natural persons in service trade. It also assesses the nature of liberalisation that has occurred in this mode of supply under GATS and notes the limited progress made in this regard. In view of the ongoing round of GATS negotiations, it suggests ways to stregthen the overall GATS framework through greater transparency and specificity in the commitments on movement of natural persons and through the introduction of various multilateral disciplines.