F. L. McDougall: Éminence grise of Australian Economic Diplomacy

This paper examines the principal economic ideas of F. L. McDougall, a largely forgotten, sometime government official and 'amateur' economist who exercised an enigmatic influence upon Australia's economic diplomacy in the interwar years. Beginning with his conception of 'sheltered markets', the international manifestation of the Bruce Government's vision for Australia of 'men, money, and markets', the paper explores McDougall's later advocacy of a 'nutrition approach' to world agriculture and its extension into 'economic appeasement'. McDougall's ideas were theoretically unsophisticated, and realized little in the way of immediate achievements. In the longer run they could be viewed more favourably. Naive perhaps and idealistic certainly, McDougall's ideas were part of a broader movement that, after the Second World War, redefined the role of international economic institutions. If nothing else, McDougall's active proselytizing of his ideas lent Australia an unusual 'voice' in international forums at a time when it was scarcely heard.     

PARCHING THE LAND?: THE CHETTIARS IN BURMA

In the history of Burma's economy, few groups have been as vilified as the Chettiars. A community of Indian moneylenders, the Chettiars were crucial agents in transforming Burma into the rice bowl of Asia. Following the global depression of the 1930s, Burmese agriculture became severely distressed and wide-scale loan default saw the transfer of much of Burma's cultivatable land to the Chettiars, who were demonised and made scapegoats for the vices of colonialism. The paper draws on the 'information-theoretic revolution' in economics to reappraise the role of the Chettiars in Burma. We conclude the Chettiars merit history's better judgement.     

Cost Efficiency of the Banking Sector in Vietnam: A Bayesian Stochastic Frontier Approach with Regularity Constraints

This paper investigates the cost efficiency of the Vietnamese banking industry. To obtain an appropriate estimate of cost efficiency, monotonicity and concavity constraints are incorporated in the estimation of the cost frontier using the Bayesian approach. Overall, the level of cost efficiency of Vietnam's banking sector is relatively high, around 87 percent. The findings reveal minor and insignificant differences in the cost efficiency of different groups of banks classified by ownership. Furthermore, throughout the estimation period, the industry faced a slight decrease in cost efficiency. This could be explained by increases in the costs of managing diverse activities, the enlargement of branch networks and the upgrading of the banking technology platform.