Asia and the Global Economy最新文献

The paper analyzes China's rise, its causes and consequences as well as China's geopolitical strategy. We discuss in particular its meaning in the context of the evolution of the International (dis)order, threatened by nationalist populism. A particularly important question is the effect of North Korea's successful nuclear program on the situation in Northeast Asia, in the context of China's rise.

Even if Asia shows a relatively low density of regional integration arrangements, the continent has been relatively active in designing indicator systems to monitor the ongoing integration processes. Organisations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Asian Development Bank, Eurasian Development Bank, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia have been involved in such activities. The purpose of this short article is to review the indicator systems that are currently being developed or have recently been developed, to monitor and analyse regional integration processes in Asia. These systems are cast against the background of experiences with building indicators and indicator systems globally.

A subset of indicator systems receives a closer look. The assessment covers: (i) general scope and purpose of the indicator system, (ii) specific scope (policy areas covered), (iii) indicator selection, and (iv) weighting and aggregation. Lessons are drawn from these experiences to inform future monitoring efforts in Asia and beyond.

The paper investigated the difference the EU made to the nature and speed of convergence process in the countries that joined the EU since 2004 relative to countries that converged outside such closely-knit supranational organization. It draws some lessons from this analysis for ASEAN countries. The most important lesson is that closely integrated supranational organizations can boost economic convergence to the global frontier by further unleashing the market forces of globalization. However, market-based rapid economic convergence requires matching improvement in institutional quality to make the process sustainable and to turn economic convergence into social convergence.

In addition to being one of the most isolated countries in the world, North Korea has been the target of sanctions and trade restrictions in recent years. This paper examines the trade patterns of North Korea with its 19 major trading partners over the period 1989–2016. Moreover, the paper quantifies the trade barriers between North Korea and the rest of the world by estimating border effects in a gravity model framework. The findings indicate that North Korea's trade with developed countries has been declining for almost two decades, while trade with emerging economies has been intensifying. Over the last decade, trade with almost all countries has collapsed with the exception of China. The regression results imply that despite being the second largest trading partner, South Korea faces the highest trade barriers with North Korea, after controlling for distance, contiguity, and economic size. Emerging economies recorded the lowest trade hurdles, while developed countries witnessed a dramatic rise in border effects since the early 2000s. China's trade costs vis-à-vis North Korea are higher than for the rest of the world but remained relatively stable over the past two decades.

We study the global impact of the Chinese economy based on a novel indirect approach where the spillover effect is quantified from a forecast error model under relatively favorable identifying conditions. Findings from the real-time World Economic Outlook data over the period 2004 ̶ 2015 indicate that an increase in economic growth in China had a negative impact on most other economies one to two years ahead. The estimations furthermore uncover evidence at the global level that spillover propagated by influencing prices, including global commodity prices, which tend to increase in reaction to accelerating economic growth in China.

South Korea has proven resilient through crises. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Korea has used testing and contact tracing to keep the number of cases per capita far below those in the U.S. and Europe. This paper uses sectoral stock returns to gauge the impact of the pandemic on the Korean economy. The results indicate that industrial machinery stocks have doubled in value in the eight months since the crisis hit. Other sectors that benefit individuals hunkered at home such as consumer digital services, software and computer services, leisure goods, and electronic entertainment have also done well. On the other hand, sectors providing services such as travel and leisure, casinos and gambling, and convenience stores have languished. The crisis has benefited sectors producing goods and employing higher-skilled workers and harmed sectors providing services and employing lower-skilled workers. This risks perpetuating disparities that existed in Korea before the pandemic.

Policy makers in the Asia Economic Community (AEC) engaged in the integration of the countries in the region have so far focused their attention on measures affecting commodity markets. Integration of investment activities should follow in the future. To achieve integration, the policy makers will have to harmonize investment rules. This paper discusses some of the major theoretical and empirical issues of investment governance. The theory is quite clear that, in most cases, cooperation and harmonization of investment rules should be beneficial for countries, a conclusion that is strongly supported by empirical evidence. However, the theory is less clear about specific rules. Though it is still evolving, the theory does provide useful guidance to policy makers in the AEC for negotiating more complete and efficient contracts involving foreign investment.

Twenty years of debate regarding the restructuring of the Chinese freight railway have failed to yield a consensus. Early policy statements favoring the creation of above-the-rail competition over a monopoly infrastructure – the “European” model of rail restructuring – have broadened into a lively policy and scholarly debate that includes as an alternative the division of the system into competing vertically integrated railways – the “Americas” model of restructuring. To date, however, there have been no tangible reform steps beyond organizational restructuring, the construction of new coal railroads, some with private-sector participation, and the introduction of scheduled container service between China and Europe. In this paper we argue in favor of the Americas model as a basis for restructuring and offer two alternative scenarios for the creation of multiple vertically integrated freight railways. Both plans enable competition between independent firms and routes for import/export traffic, one a southern, One Belt, One Road path, the other a northern path via the Trans-Siberian Railway.

This paper reconsiders the narratives surrounding Japan's economic performance since the 1980s in relation to the experiences of the U.S. and the Eurozone. There are important differences between these three economies and some striking parallels. It is found that the poor reputation of the Bank of Japan (BoJ) is, at times, underserved. To be sure, there were periods of excessive tightness in policy, but the same is true for the other two economies considered. Indeed, the BoJ has been more credible than the other two central banks considered at various times over the past three decades.

In addition, a look back at BoJ over the decades does not provide much support the hypothesis that a significant policy break translates into economic success. Instead, smaller changes are just as likely to lead to a tipping point with significant consequences. Indeed, some narrative-based significant regime shifts do not show in the data.