Search

This paper examines the impact of remittances on economic growth, using developing countries in Asia and the Pacific as a case study. Using data for the period 1993–2013, our results show that remittances only generate negative and significant impacts on economic growth if they reach 10 percent of GDP or higher. A remittances‐to‐GDP ratio of below 10 percent could still impact growth negatively, but the effect is statistically insignificant. The present study finds some degree of substitutability between remittances and financial development. Foreign direct investment (FDI), but not other types of capital inflow, contributes significantly to economic growth. Other traditional growth engines, including education, trade openness, and domestic investment, are crucial in promoting growth in developing Asian and Pacific nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southeast Asia is a development success story. By 2025, it is forecast that extreme poverty in the region will have been ‘eradicated’. Does this mean that the challenges so evident in the 1960s when the countries of the region began to pursue development have been met, and the objectives achieved? The paper makes a case for thinking afresh about development and the poverty project, recognising that development is never neatly achieved but, rather, re‐worked, re‐engineered and re‐imagined over time. This is done through identifying different categories of ‘poor’, each produced through different poverty‐making processes, measured and viewed in different ways, and their poverty addressed using different approaches and policies. With specific reference to the cases of Laos and Thailand, and drawing on longitudinal research in the latter country, it is argued that while economic growth does trickle down, it trickles down in quite discrete and often contingent ways. Furthermore, there is always development work to be done, because development creates its own work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper describes the benefits and costs, in qualitative terms, of managing food price instability in Asia in the context of promoting economic growth and poverty reduction to improve food security. The experience of Asian governments in actual practice with price stabilization is discussed in the context of managing an efficient transition to market-mediated food security. Recent experience in Indonesia, where a sharp increase in rice prices (caused by a ban on rice imports) pushed 4 million people into poverty, provides continued motivation for the analytical story in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asia is an increasingly significant player in the global economy, and Asia's unprecedented growth and multifaceted disparities have generated many fascinating issues for scholarly research. This paper summarizes the diverse regional policy and practices of Asia in the context of globalization and transition. We argue that research on Asia is embedded in the complex economic-geographical processes and multiple trajectories of development. This paper highlights the important role of institutions and global-local interactions in regional development and public policy. Resumen. Asia es un actor cada vez más importante en la economía mundial y su crecimiento sin precedentes y las múltiples facetas de sus disparidades han generado un buen número de tópicos fascinantes para la investigación académica. Este artículo resume las diversas políticas y prácticas regionales de Asia en el contexto de la globalización y la transición. Sostenemos que la investigación sobre Asia está inmersa en los complejos procesos económico-geográficos y múltiples líneas de desarrollo. El artículo pone de relieve el importante papel de las instituciones y las interacciones globales-locales en materia de desarrollo regional y políticas públicas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past two decades, the fast-developing Asia has emerged as one of the most important economic regions. However, its economic growth is accompanied with severe software piracy. This paper analyzes productivity changes of 11 Asian economies and 4 non-Asian industrialized economies by taking into account software piracy using the Malmquist productivity index and its two components, efficiency change and technical change over the period 1994–2002. The results indicate that when software piracy is included, productivity growth in Asian developing economies regresses, while productivity growth in the four non-Asian industrialized economies improves. Interpretation and implications are provided. ( JEL L86, O34) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade openness, high savings rates, human capital accumulation, and macroeconomic policy only accounted for part of the 1965–1990 growth performance in East Asia. Subsequently, demographic change was shown to be a missing factor in explaining the East Asian growth premium. Since 1990, East Asia has undertaken major economic reforms in response to financial crises and other factors. We reexamine the role of the demographic transition in contributing to cross-country differences in economic growth through to 2005, with a particular focus on East Asia. We highlight the need for policy to offset potential negative effects of aging populations in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies a game-theoretical analysis of institutions to the international institutional architecture, of which the G20 is treated as a central element. The article argues that international institutions such as the World Trade Organization or the International Monetary Fund are best understood as mechanisms for coordinating and supporting equilibria in repeated games played among policy-makers in the world's largest economies. The growth of the emerging economies, particularly in Asia, has altered these games, and there is no guarantee, with these new entrants and new issues that have emerged, that the old equilibrium strategies are still viable. The G20, it is argued, is best understood as an attempt to respond to this change and coordinate play on a new set of globally welfare-enhancing equilibria in these games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an annotated list of books related to the economic developments of Asian countries as of May 2004. "China: New Engine of World Growth" edited by Ross Garnaut and Ligang Song; "Sustaining Competitiveness in the New Global Economy: The Experience of Singapore," edited by Ramkishen Rajan; "Democracy, Governance and Economic Performance: Theory and Evidence," by Feng Yi; "Poverty, Growth and Institutions in Developing Asia," edited by Ernesto M. Pernia and Anil B. Deolalikar.

The current crisis in Asia has seen the case for more open economic policy come under attack in the developing world. In this article Michael Chui, Paul Levine, Mansoob Murshed, and Joseph Pearlman argue that any reversal of the trend towards globalisation would be a great mistake for policymakers. The association of openness with higher growth is one of the most robust empirical results in economics. Here we explore the mechanisms that explain this result. We argue that current high growth rates in Asia are unsustainable and there is a long-term as well as a short-term problem of 'over-investment' in Asia. However, we report research findings that show how international knowledge spillovers and free trade can enable the world economy to grow, the developing countries to progress, and the developed countries to benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a common framework for addressing Asia's varied human-development challenges by observing that, for the most part, they stem from a systematic failure in the delivery of basic services, especially to poor people, caused by a failure of accountability at different points in the service-delivery chain. It describes various efforts by Asian countries to remedy this situation. While there are some encouraging early results, these efforts have also turned up some new challenges to Asia's human-development problems, three of which - politics, decentralisation, and the role of learning from impact evaluation - are highlighted by the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]