Asia and the Global Economy最新文献

China's rapidly growing role in the world economy has been accompanied by rising bilateral trade with Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN group) as well as expanded offshore renminbi (RMB) markets in the region. Using a Markov-switching analysis that allows for variation across stable and volatile domestic inflation regimes, we find evidence of significant inflation transmission from China to Australia and the five larger ASEAN economies. Chinese inflation effects are further confirmed when we incorporate money supply and commodity price effects within a Markov-switching Vector Autoregressive (MSVAR) framework. The importance of allowing for regime change over our sample period is clear and these inflation effects are shown to generally be stronger during periods when domestic inflation is more volatile. These findings on inflation pass-through from China represent a novel extension to a prior literature that has been primarily limited to real economy and trade effects.

The advent of the coronavirus in early 2020 led to the severe shutdown of economic activities across the globe. The virus led to a pandemic affecting the physical facilitation of cross border merchandise trade. International trade is augmented with trade documentation and physical verification. Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) as WTO plus agreements between countries have provided bilateral trade opportunities for participating countries. Due to the pandemic, several physical processes shifted to digital mode and people were forced to participate, giving a boost to the digital economy across the world. Developing and under-developed countries were left behind due to a lack of clarity on digital trade provisions in the present WTO framework. Though, RTAs provided much scope for interpreting the existing provisions with innovation for the current times. The present study explores the digital trade provisions in the RTAs and how the pandemic will further push inculcating provisions. The focus is on RTAs that exist in the Asia Pacific region, along with India's perspective. The study identifies the initial digital provisions and collaborations, and evaluates the scope of digital trade.

This paper examines two aspects of the digitalization of finance in India, which has been surprisingly robust and fast growing. Much of this success is due to the government's introduction of a biometric identity known as Aadhaar. Because financial transactions require definitive proof of identity of the transacting parties, Aadhaar provides this proof without any document via biometric verification, thus greatly facilitating electronic transactions. The paper also documents the impact of digital financialization by showing examples of entrepreneurship, both directly in the fintech space through the creation of new web-based services as well as the rise of new businesses that make use of the fintech infrastructure that has been created.

This study examines the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economic integration of the ASEAN-6 region. The study finds that the coronavirus pandemic's impact can be easily traced using stringency, bilateral exports, and tourist arrivals, indicating a significant implication for the economic integration process. The firm-level analysis suggests that though the coronavirus outbreak's impact has caused uniformly to firms, the effect varies across ASEAN-6 nations. The pandemic strongly impacts large firms.

This paper argues that Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, faces a dilemma between maintaining his dictatorship and enabling economic growth amid pervasive marketization. Although he puts more emphasis on economic development than his father did, he is unlikely to launch Chinese-style reform mainly because North Korea is different from China in terms of the political conditions, which determine the intensity of economic reforms. To do so, the paper reviews the literature on the impact of marketization on social norms, the official economy, and corruption in North Korea. On the basis of these impacts, it posits that facilitating marketization from below contributes to North Korea's move toward a market economy.

This study analyses the lack of robust conclusions about the association between inequality and economic growth. On the basis of ex-ante concept of inequality of opportunity, the parametric measure of unequal opportunity is used by partitioning the total sample in to 16 mutually exclusive circumstance groups. Theil's T index of monthly per capita consumption expenditure in household survey conducted by the NSSO in different rounds since the early 1980s is used to measure overall inequality and unequal opportunity. The relative index of inequality of opportunity is used as explanatory variable in the growth regression equation. To find out the direction of causality, we also estimate inequality equation by taking growth as an explanatory variable in presence of some control variables. Empirical findings of this study suggest that overall inequality and inequality of opportunity have negative effects on subsequent growth, while initial growth has no significant effect overall inequality and has a significant positive effect on inequality of opportunity.

Cashless payment has rapidly developed in emerging markets following the digitization of finance. In this paper, by calculating the ratio of cashless payment in Russia, we find that it takes the shape of J-curve exponential growth, unlike in other developed and emerging economies. Although debit cards significantly dominate other types of cashless payment, the development of e-money is also significant. Internal and external factors both account for the J-curve exponential growth in cashless payment, and the external factors have a larger impact. We distinguish the peculiar features in the promotion of cashless payment that are peculiar to Russia and highlight the fact that Russia's national payment system was formed to address rising national security and geopolitical risks. Cashless payment is centralized and administered by the Bank of Russia, in order to digitize the financial sector and the government, with the goal of driving the digital economy.

This paper makes the case that time is ripe for the countries in southeast and northeast Asia to actively seek greater integration with India. The case is based on two arguments. First, China has emerged as an increasingly aggressive and belligerent power bringing it into conflict with its neighbors in the South China Sea. Therefore, strategically, these countries would need India, which is the continent's second largest in land area and population with a long common border with China, Second, having embraced the market model, India is poised to emerge as a major economy not just in Asia but also the world. By 2030, it will likely be a $6 trillion economy in 2021 dollars, becoming the third largest economy in the world and second largest in Asia. This prospect makes the country a large potential market for other Asian countries.

There is a big debate on the level of present-day female agency within the household in China. Even though the two sides of the debate make implicit assumptions on historical agency, a direct link is rarely established as we lack information on historical female agency among lower class households. In this paper we use a unique dataset on the ranking of women in the household for rural Yugan County (Jiangxi province, China) for the year 1947 when traditional households were still dominant.

The main conclusion is that, contrary to much of the classic literature on the subject, ranking among females in traditional Chinese households was much less rigid than expected, with most women being in charge at a certain point in their lives. This was mostly driven by gender-specific issues such as a son's taking over as the head of the household, thereby raising his wife's status, but with potential other daughters-in-law (wives of the brothers of the head of the household) ending up as assistants Yet, other factors also play a role. For example, we find a positive impact of traditional education on female agency.

North Korean trade networks have adapted to international sanctions through a variety of strategies to solve the problem of operating in a hostile environment at both the global level, and at the local level. At the global level, they have engaged in obfuscation of the nature of trade and actors, use of state prerogatives and resource, and arbitraging the countries in which they operate. At the local cross-border level, North Korean trade networks maintain relationships with brokers that obfuscate their true nature, and engage in smuggling across the Chinese border by land, river, and sea. How North Korean trade networks have adapted to sanctions has implications for denuclearization. First, the sanctions-evading strategies used by North Korea in many respects originated in the changes wrought in the North Korean economy since the 1990s, and as such, they are likely to continue even if sanctions are loosened. Second, while North Korean trade networks have adapted to sanctions, this is not necessarily their optimal scenario for economic development, which has implications for Kim Jong-un's denuclearization strategy. Finally, the trade networks themselves can continue to be used as part of a hedging strategy by North Korea even if denuclearization is continuing apace, but this strategy requires the cooperation of non-North Korean businesses.