Asian-Pacific Economic Literature最新文献

This study employs the Lasso–Granger algorithm, in combination with sliding window technology, to construct a dynamic directed complex network that captures the dynamics of systemic risk transmission between the financial industry and the real economy. By analysing the network's characteristic indicators among the banking, securities, and insurance sectors, we explore variations in systemic risk transmission across these three major financial sectors and the real economy. Additionally, the CONCOR algorithm is used to detect community structures within the complex network, enabling a dynamic assessment of these communities' attributes over time. The empirical results show that the ability of the insurance, banking, and securities sectors to receive systemic risk weakens progressively. The insurance sector has the strongest capacity to transmit systemic risk, whereas the banking sector has the weakest capacity to transmit systemic risk. The banking and insurance sectors exhibit similar role attributes in the process of systemic risk transmission. The risk transmission relationship between the real economy and the financial industry shows heterogeneity.

This paper examines the causal effects of Thailand's 2017 large-scale unconditional cash transfer programme (‘the state welfare card programme’) that covered over 20% of the country's population. The study uses regression discontinuity methods and data from the 2019 nationally representative household socio-economic survey. Results show that this programme had no significant impact on consumption expenditure and food expenditure, as intended. However, the programme caused a significant increase in non-consumption expenditure, especially items paid for in cash. Also, the programme significantly increased in-kind consumption expenditure, demonstrating the payment modality of the programme. Given a large evidence base showing the poverty-reducing effects of cash transfer programmes in developing countries, the findings point to the need to revamp the programme at both design and implementation stages.

The augmented matching function is modified to identify the determinants of job employment and the pattern of vertical mismatch in Thailand's labour market during 2017–2022. Specifically, using the General Method of Moments technique, the results show that job employment in each skill group is positively affected by its own lagged variable, the number of unemployed workers and job vacancies but negatively influenced by the congestion externalities of job vacancies in other skill groups. In terms of elasticity, the elasticity of job employment with respect to unemployment and job vacancies is around 0.36–0.46 and 0.31–0.43, respectively. Furthermore, overskilling is observed in both semi-skilled and low-skilled positions, while underskilling occurs only in semi-skilled positions regarding the coefficient values for the congestion of job vacancies. Finally, the provision of more job-matching platforms and upskilling courses is suggested as a policy recommendation to mitigate the problems of overskilling and underskilling, respectively.

Governments, economists, and policymakers in India have long been concerned about India's unsustainability of public debt. Therefore, the present study seeks fresh evidence of India's fiscal sustainability from 1980–81 to 2020–21. This study employs linear (model-based) and three non-linear models (quadratic, cubic, and kinked) to examine the fiscal sustainability in India. The regime changes are quantified using a ‘regime-switching model-based fiscal stability test’ that does not consider the linear fiscal response function method. The findings from the analysis point to a statistically significant fiscal sustainability outcome for the linear model but not for the non-linear model. There is also the sign of a ‘regime-switching’ fiscal rule in India from 1980–81 to 2020–21. The unsustainable fiscal regime has been identified only in three periods: 1983–84 to 1993–94, 2009–10 to 2012–13, and 2018–19 to 2020–21. For other periods, sustainable regimes are evident. The study finds that India's fiscal policy satisfies the ‘non-Ponzi game condition’, as revealed by the regime-specific reaction coefficients and the average periods of fiscal regimes. However, the country's long-term fiscal sustainability has been jeopardised, as the debt-stabilising condition is strictly violated. Regime-based insensitivity, which results in an unsustainable fiscal regime lasting for more than 3 years, might expose the country to long-term fiscal unsustainability.

Promoting the transformation of the state-owned assets supervision system (SASS) from ‘managing assets’ to ‘managing capital’ is the key direction of the new round of state-owned assets reform. This article takes the policy implementation of state-owned capital investment and operation companies (‘two types of companies’) as a quasi-natural experiment, selects Chinese A-share listed state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from 2009 to 2022 as the research sample, and investigates the impact of SASS reform on the performance of SOEs using a multi-period difference-in-differences model. The results suggest that SASS reform can significantly improve the performance of SOEs. Mechanism analysis indicates that SASS reform enhances the performance of SOEs by weakening government intervention, increasing external pay gaps, and reducing agency costs. Heterogeneity analysis shows that SASS reform on the performance of SOEs is affected by the administrative levels, industry attributes, and external institutional environments. The performance-enhancing effect of SASS reform is more significant in central SOEs, competitive SOEs, and SOEs with a better external institutional environment. The findings enrich the research on the economic consequences of SASS reform and the factors affecting the performance of SOEs, providing empirical evidence for deepening the reform of state-owned capital and SOEs and promoting the high-quality development of SOEs.

In the context of China's successful high-speed railway (HSR) construction, this study examines the micro-mechanisms of financial performance related to the opening of HSR from a firm-level supply chain perspective. This study's findings are as follows: (1) Supply chain performance significantly increased by 14.71% on average after the HSR opening. (2) After the HSR opened, real earnings management (REM) significantly reduced, especially overproduction and abnormal cash flow manipulation. (3) HSR reduced REM by promoting supply chain performance. (4) With a reduction in REM, HSR improved stock pricing efficiency, which is reflected in the reduction of stock price synchronisation and crash risk. The conclusions continue to hold after controlling for other traditional urban transportation, major urban events and strategic corporate M&A arbitrage events.

This study examined the impact of two major crises: the 1998 financial crisis and the 2021 COVID-19 outbreak as well as the 1996 and 2019 non-crisis period on child educational spending by Thai households. Using Thailand Socio-Economic Survey (SES) data along with limited dependent variable models with an emphasis on correcting endogeneity problems were employed to achieve the objective. The results showed that households reduced educational spending in response to unemployment in both the 2021 crisis year and the 2019 non-crisis period. More importantly households decreased educational spending due to unemployment in the 1998 and 2021 crisis period more than in the 1996 and 2019 non-crisis period. Additionally, we only found households in the second and third income quartiles cut educational expenditure in response to unemployment.