INDONESIAN TRADE LIBERALISATION: ESTIMATING THE GAINS

Indonesia has undergone comprehensive trade liberalisation by participating in multilateral and regional trade arrangements and by conducting unilateral liberalisation. This paper evaluates the different paths of liberalisation the country has followed, and measures their effects on the economy. It considers the impact of several liberalisation scenarios: unilateral liberalisation; regional liberalisation through APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) and AFTA (the ASEAN Free Trade Area); and multilateral trade liberalisation through the Uruguay Round (UR). The results show that the full implementation of UR and APEC liberalisation would greatly benefit Indonesia, and that unilateral liberalisation, carried out in conjunction with the UR commitment, would lead to large welfare gains. On the other hand, the creation of AFTA is expected to add little to welfare in Indonesia or in the other ASEAN member countries.     

The estimation and determinants of emerging market country risk and the dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model

Country risk assessment is central to the international investment, which recently has increasingly focused on emerging markets (EM). In this paper we proxy for country risk in EM by using time-varying beta. We extend existing literature by applying a dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model. After confirming beta is time varying in twenty EM over the period January 1995 to December 2008 we investigate the GARCH (1,1) model and find the t-distribution generates the lowest forecast errors compared to the normal error distribution and a generalised error distribution. In a comparison of previous modelling techniques the results of our modified Diebold-Mariano test statistics suggest that the Kalman Filter model outperforms the GARCH model and the Schwert and Seguin (1990) model. Using a DCC-GARCH model our evidence suggests that considering dynamic betas can improve beta out-of-sample predicting ability and therefore offers potential gains for investors. Finally, we find dynamic betas across EM are strongly associated with each nation's interest rates, US interest rates and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and to a lesser extent the exchange rates. Our results have some similarities to those in previous studies of developed markets in the economic determinants of time-varying beta but differences exist in the results on best model to forecast time-varying beta. These findings have implications for estimating country risk for investment and risk management purposes in EM.     

Migration, Fixed Costs, and Location-Specific Amenities: A Hazard Analysis for a Panel of Males

This article presents econometric estimates of the adult working-age male hazard function of interstate migration fitted to data obtained from migration decisions of adult males over a twenty-year period. The results show a strong negative effect of the real wage difference between origin and destination, and of fixed costs associated with a move, on the hazard rate of interstate migration. Farmers and other self-employed males, and males who have school-age children, have unusually low hazard rates of interstate migration. Although a high crime rate is shown to increase the real wage, it also has a separate positive effect on the hazard of migration.