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The paper seeks to analyze the remarkable pace of industrialization in Asia during the past half century, even if its distribution was most unequal between countries, with a focus on selected countries described as the Asian-14. It argues that economic openness, while necessary was not sufficient. It was conducive to industrialization only when combined with sensible industrial policy that was implemented by effective governments. There was, of course, an enormous diversity in the nature of openness and the process of industrialization across countries. Yet, there were discernible patterns in the different paths to industrialization, pointing to determinants of success and factors underlying failure. The analysis highlights the importance of technological capabilities, learning and innovation, which were essential for the few countries that joined the league of industrialized nations. It concludes that this will be just as necessary for countries that follow in their footsteps or aspire to sustain their industrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights open access activities and resources from Western Asia. The development of open access journals from this region is analyzed through regional listings in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and information about the development and implementation of open access repositories is taken from the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) platform. Additional information about OA resources and development projects was found through UNESCO's Global Open Access Portal. The study's findings show that, even with support from international groups like EIFL and OpenAIRE, the region's open access market lags behind that of more developed countries. Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) stand out among Western Asian states, and Cyprus took the important step of instituting a national public open access policy. Awareness projects and workshops will be a vital step in helping the countries of Western Asia to see the value of open access and to build a stronger OA infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to trace the evolution of the concept of integrated water resources management (IWRM), and the definition of the term as it is being currently understood. The paper then proceeds to discuss its relevance as a strategy to be adopted in water resources development and management. The term IWRM is a current buzzword that is vigorously pursued in developing countries by many water professionals. However, the paper notes that its underlying concepts have been reflected in traditional water management practices in some countries several centuries ago. The paper comments on the applicability of the prescribed strategies in today's context. Lessons for an integrated approach to manage the water resources in a country can be drawn from any source, but the wisdom of trying to fully replicate the developed country management models in the present context of Asia is questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the validity real interest rate parity (RIP) for a sample of 19 OECD and Asian developing economies. The distinction of this paper is that we exploit both linearity and non-linear unit root tests as advocated by Dufrenot et al. (Applied Economics, 38, pp. 203-229, 2006) to validate the parity. The major finding are: (i) the alignments from real interest rate differentials (RIDs) are corrected in a non-linear fashion and that the adjustments is asymmetric in both size and speed; (ii) that RIP holds for the developed and developing countries; and (iii) the empirical results are invariant with respect to the US, Japan or Germany as the centre country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions about global aquaculture production and prospects for future growth largely focus on Asia, where most global production takes place. Countries in Asia accounted for about 89% of global production in 2016. Exclusive attention to Asian aquaculture, however, overlooks the fact that "the blue revolution" is occurring in most parts of the world. This paper examines patterns in the development of aquaculture production by analyzing growth rates across the globe at the regional, species and country levels. The results show that production in some non-Asian countries is growing more rapidly than the major Asian producers. Moreover, most developed countries have played a limited role in the blue revolution despite being leading producers as late as the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural transformation is a key feature of economic development. Developed countries all followed the same process of structural transformation. This paper asks whether developing countries also follow a similar process. Three key findings emerge from the detailed analysis. First, developing countries are following different paths of structural transformation that deviate from those of developed countries in different ways. Second, the paths of the subcontinents of Africa, Asia, and Latin America are distinct, and there is great heterogeneity within each region. Third, many countries experience substantial structural transformation during periods of economic stagnation or even decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the determination of inflation in the framework of an open economy forward-looking as well as conventional backward-looking Phillips curve for eight Asian countries - Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, China Mainland and India. Using quarterly data from the 1990s to 2005 and applying the instrumental variables estimation technique, we find that the output gap is significant in explaining the inflation rate in almost all the countries. Furthermore, at least one measure of international competitiveness has a statistically significant influence on inflation in all the countries. The differences in the developed and developing world are highlighted by the significance of agriculture related supply shocks in determining inflation in the case of developing countries. For all countries, the forward-looking Phillips curve provides a better fit compared to the backward-looking variant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The seminal research conducted by the Meaning of Working (MOW) International Research Team was undertaken mainly in Western industrialized nations, and that study identified five underlying domains about the meaning of working. One of these domains, the valued work goals, has attracted ongoing attention, and this study aims to add to the literature by reporting managerial perceptions from ten Asian countries. This paper examines the relative importance of a set of 11 work goals, with a sample of 2,466 managers across these ten nations. It may be noted that this research employed the same instrument as the MOW investigation in the early 1980s. Two salient features of the study reported in this paper are firstly, that a number of interesting similarities and differences were observable in relation to the MOW investigation. Secondly, a strikingly convergent of the work goal of "learning" was overwhelmingly seen as the key priority in all nations across all demographic groups. The paper provides an exploratory analysis in an attempt to establish a theoretical underpinning to this empirical evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of "Third World Multinationals" has always been, at least, slightly misleading, and has now also become obsolete, taking into account the dismantlement of most of the ideological divides between different political and economic blocks since the early 1990s, and the new rules of the games imposed by globalization. Furthermore, new multinationals emerging from China, and also from the former Soviet republics, are demanding a new and more flexible taxonomy. The present paper re-defines "Multinationals from Developing Countries" (MEDCs) and it reviews first, the current literature on multinationals, looking at the key factors which may explain the internationalization process of enterprises coming from outside the traditional, developed, and industrialised world, and also whether they may enjoy specific sources of comparative advantages, different from those ascribed to the old, established multinationals. A statistical appendix provides a brief but comprehensive survey of the current status of MEDCs, pointing out that, at the end of the day, there are roughly only four such enterprises in the usual rankings of the first one hundred multinational corporations, worldwide, and that the prospects of a forthcoming, and enhanced upgrading in the global corporate structure are heavily geared towards Asia. The data would also seem to support the argument that sheer "scale", as such, of the enterprises does not explain a greater or lower degree of "transnationalization," a conclusion which, added to that of the greater flexibility provided by the new information technologies, could be goods news for small- and medium-sized enterprises coming from the developing world. doi:10.1300/J482v11n04_05 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explores how carbon emissions are affected by financial inclusion. Using a balanced panel data set of 26 Asian countries, we compute a composite index, through the principal component analysis (PCA) technique, of financial inclusion based on a set of attributes related to financial inclusion. Our main analysis also delineates the subsamples of developed and developing Asian economies. The results reveal a long (short)-run positive (negative) impact of financial inclusion on carbon emissions across the Asian countries. This finding is also true for the developed country subsample, implying nonlinearity in short- and long-run relationships. For the developing countries, a more pronounced long-run positive impact compared to developed countries is found. Furthermore, the pairwise causality test results indicate the existence of bi-directional causality between financial inclusion and carbon emissions. These findings have important policy implications, especially in the context of the strategic integration of financial inclusion and climate change strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the problems addressed by the editors of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education (APJTE) refer to the issues concerning the Global South. This commentary elaborates upon the problematisations by the editors with reference to the ethical challenges arising in contexts of political turmoil; issues related to the power, or lack of it, of transnational organisations; and challenges faced by researchers from developing countries to publish their works in international journals. The commentary argues that the APJTE can, and should, contribute to solving the aforesaid issues and function as a platform for exchange of views, knowledge, and ideas among scholars from the developing nations of Asia and the Pacific and their counterparts from developed countries. In this context, substantial attention should be paid to the problems in those areas in the form of special issues, in addition to publication of articles in regular issues; an establishment of a new category for shorter pieces or commentaries should be considered; and online sessions should be organised for researchers in developing countries of Asia and the Pacific about how to publish with the APJTE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced countries have pledged to mobilize additional financial resources to developing countries, including funding from multiple sources other than official development assistance (ODA), known as foreign aid. However, the effect of the novel coronavirus pandemic has raised doubts about the feasibility of such a pledge, highlighting, once again, the possible role of ODA and the importance of explaining its allocation, which could be of vital relevance for understanding its effectiveness. This study analyzes a vast number of bilateral and multilateral donors by applying a novel methodology in the context of aid allocation – principal-component factor analysis – covering the period 1990–2015. The results revealed four distinct clusters of donors: (i) the proportionally largest Western European donors, characterized by a significant number of beneficiaries, especially low-income countries; (ii) donors that are predominantly driven by structural links with recipients, especially links derived from colonial connections; (iii) a group of mainly Eastern European donors who are engaged with lower-income countries in Eastern Europe and Western Asia; and (iv) a group of Asian and Oceanian donors that select their partners mainly based on the geographical proximity criterion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically reexamines the hypothesis of a positive relationship between the inflation rate and its variability. The sample consists of 66 countries for the 1955-85 sample period. Using pooled cross-section time series data, empirical tests are performed for nine different country-groupings ranging from the G-7 developed countries to a group of 10 developing Asian countries. Several important conclusions can be derived. First, irrespective of the variability measure employed, the results indicate the presence of a significant positive relationship between the inflation rate and its variability. This provides strong support to Okun's hypothesis. Second, this relationship is stronger during the flexible rather than the fixed exchange rate period. Third, there appears to be an optimum zone of inflation rate within which the predictability of inflation is at its highest and hence uncertainty cost is at its lowest. For the 1955-85 sample period, this optimum zone of average inflation rate lies in the range of 5 to 7 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the difficulties that Asian countries encounter in their process of economic development. The author gives a comparison between the economic development of the U.S. and India. He notes that Americans started under conditions of extreme abundance of natural resources relative to population while the Indians started under conditions of extreme population relative to natural resources. Several factors are presented that affect the economic difficulties of Asian countries which include the underestimation of natural resources, change in demographic structure, and rapid population.

This article discusses the reports of the NATO study groups on the situation in the Third World, from the aftermath of the Suez crisis until the 1967 reorganization of the alliance through the Harmel Report. These were the infamous ‘out-of-area’ issues which caused significant disagreements within the alliance. NATO analysis was dominated by the primacy of the Cold War: its major subject was ‘Soviet penetration’ of the periphery, rather than the problems of the global South as such. Arguably, this Cold War perspective prevented the NATO analysts from fully evaluating the dangers of the situation in the Third World. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The global financial crisis that started in the summer of 2007 is one of the most significant events to have affected the world order since the end of the Cold War. It has stimulated debate in developed countries about how global finance should be regulated to ensure the fairness of individual transactions and the stability of the financial system, and in some places, about the proper place of finance in society. Things have been different in East Asia where resilience and continuity are characteristic of the impact and response to financial volatility. The development of financial disintermediation, characterized by the emergence and growing role of securities markets, and the changing identity of banks, has continued largely unaffected in the region. The article argues three distinct phenomena have combined to produce this outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to evaluate empirically the classical viability condition for East Asia, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa 1980-1995, and advanced countries 1950-1992. The viability condition is proposed by Foley and Michl (1999), and is used for judging empirically which approach is more valid, the classical biased technical change approach or neoclassical production function approach. Our results acknowledge the predominance of the former, which is Foley-Michl's contention. However, there remains a disputable interpretation as to the case of a declining labour productivity, which is broadly seen in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa during the period considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization is closely associated with the turn towards neo-liberal economic strategies. One defining feature of neo-liberalism is labour market liberalization. The experiences of labour market reform in the Northeast Asian Newly Industrializing Countries of South Korea (hereafter Korea) and Taiwan exhibit differences from both the neo-liberal and alternative capitalist patterns commonly identified in the political economy literature. Using a comparative framework based on the criteria of labour market reform, political configurations, corporatist institutions, and the feedback effects of labour market policies, this article will reveal and explain the distinctiveness of the Northeast Asian pattern. Variations between Korea and Taiwan will also be explained using this framework. The findings here will contribute to the debate about how local institutions and politics interact with globalizing forces to produce divergent outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study empirically examined five different versions of Wagner's law by employing annual time-series data on six countries over the period 1951-1996. Three countries are part of the emerging industrialized countries of Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand) and three are industrialized countries (Japan, USA, and the United Kingdom). The analysis is an advance over previous work in two ways: first, the stationarity propertities of the data and the order of integration of the data are empirically investigated using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and the Kwiatkowski et al. (Journal of Econometrics, 1, 1992) (KPSS), tests and second, the hypothesis of a long-run relationship between income and government spending is tested using bivariate cointegrated systems and employing the methodology of cointegration analysis as suggested by Johansen (Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 12, 1988) and Johansen and Juselius (Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 52, 1990). The results indicate that there exist a long-run relationship between income and government spending for sample countries studied with the exception of Thailand. Furthermore, it is found that the results concerning the validity of Wagner's Law are also held for selected countries studied with the exception of Thailand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]