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Foreign direct investment (FDI) can affect the levelanddispersion of wages, but there is a lack of empirical work in this area. This paper tests for the effects of FDI on wages and wage inequality in five East Asian countries. Wage inequality has been low and decreasing in some, but not all, East Asian countries. Using ILO data for wages and employment by occupation, we do not find strong evidence that FDI reduced wage inequality in five East Asian countries over the period 1985–98. Indeed, controlling for domestic influences (wage setting, supply of skills) we find that FDI has raised wage inequality in Thailand. Because we also find that FDI raises the wages for both skilled and low-skilled workers, our findings should help to move the debate from impact (does FDI contribute to growth and development?) to appropriate policies to utilize FDI (how can we make FDI work for all?). We suggest that the education system in Thailand has not been sufficiently oriented to maximize the benefits from FDI. Countries wanting to develop on the basis of FDI should invest sufficient resources in good quality and appropriate human resources, or otherwise face the possibility that growth coincides with rising wage inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the author, in a paper published in a previous issue of the journal Population Studies, he questioned the validity of the so-called Far Eastern pattern of mortality as a unique regional mortality model. In her response researcher Noreen Goldman makes three major points. First, the Far Eastern mortality pattern as originally formulated by her differs from that defined by the United Nations Population Division. Second, the method used in author's analysis is different from that of her and not effective in discerning mortality patterns. Third, the Far Eastern mortality pattern as defined by her is indeed a unique mortality model. In this article the author comments on these assertions and further demonstrates that the Far Eastern mortality pattern is not unique regional model. Goldman provides some useful information in her rejoinder, but her major conclusions are unconvincing. While her early investigation into mortality changes in East Asia played a notable role in alerting demographers to the deficiencies of life tables for describing mortality experiences outside of the industrialized world, the claim that the Far Eastern mortality pattern is a distinctive regional mortality model is not well founded.

The financial crises of the late 1990s marked an intellectual watershed for the global economy, and also for regionalism as the Janus face of globalization. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the theory and practice of regional cooperation and integration may evolve along different lines to how it was understood for most of the second half of the twentieth century. In East Asia, in particular, this will mean that the relationship between multilateralism and regionalism will change. The 'East Asian' region will become an increasingly important domain within which to explore enhanced protection against financial crises. What we might call 'monetary regionalism', sceptical western voices notwithstanding, is now firmly on the regional agenda in East Asia. Within conventional political economy, the theory and practice of monetary regionalism is not as easy to understand as traditional, trade-driven, regional integration. Thus one aim of this paper is to outline a theory of monetary regionalism and demonstrate the degree to which it represents a break with understandings of the regional project in East Asia prior to the late 1990s. From its start in 1989, APEC claimed to be a new type of regionalism. The promise was that APEC would promote open regionalism. APEC did not achieve this goal. Nor did it provide support to its Asian members during the financial crises of the late 1990s. At the same time, more traditional (what we might call Balassian) understandings of trade-driven regional integration are showing signs of decreasing importance. There is a growing appeal to trade co-operation, but this is notably an increasing interest in bilateral preferential trading arrangements. This leads to a complex picture of competing regional initiatives across the economic policy spectrum. The paper locates these initiatives in the wider context of the growing politico-economic dialogue between Southeast and Northeast Asia that has developed via the ASEAN+3 process since 1997. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sectoral price gaps that were observed in 1990 between Japan and China are studied in this paper by using a decomposition procedure within the input-output framework. The empirical results show that Japan exhibited producer prices that were higher than those observed in China mainly because it registered higher wages that were only partially offset by higher productivity. The effects on output cost gaps of primaryinput price differences and relative productivity levels are analysed. The effects arising from the use of direct inputs as well as the indirect effects that are incorporated into the difference of intermediate-input prices are accounted for by means of an input-output decomposition technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which author discusses articles on topics including focuses on "From Postcolonial to Subimperial Formations of Medicine: Superregional Perspectives from Taiwan and Korea" extends the discussion on the formation of colonial knowledge by the Japanese Empire.

Editorial. Introduces the articles published in the March 2000 special issue of 'The Journal of International Trade and Economic Development' focusing on East Asian experience in economic development and transformation. Issue of growth with openness; Relations of exchange rates, trade flows and capital accounts; Miracle of growth in Thailand.

UNESCO's relatively high prestige across East Asia has spurred intensifying efforts by governments to use its imprimatur to legitimate official narratives of the past and visions of the future. This article focuses on China's use of UNESCO as an arena for competitive national 'branding' in the education field, especially relating to STEM and AI. We analyse the Chinese state's engagement with UNESCO's education work in the context of shifts in budgetary and political influence within the organisation, and of a growing 'securitisation' of education within China itself. We show how Chinese engagement with UNESCO's educational agenda reflects both domestic political considerations and the 'major country diplomacy' of Xi Jinping, as manifested in the 'Belt and Road Initiative' and intensifying strategic competition with the USA. We conclude by discussing the implications of rising Chinese influence within the organisation for UNESCO's capacity for articulating a coherent and consistently humanistic vision for education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anoplophora chinensis Forster (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) is a highly polyphagous and invasive species native to East Asia that makes tunnels in the stems of a variety of broad-leaved plant species and cultivated plant species, as well as citrus and hazelnut. In this study, we collected A. chinensis from hazelnut orchards in Sakarya province of Türkiye, and subsequently recovered the parasitoid Megaselia scalaris (Diptera: Phoridae) from dead adult beetles. The present study reports M. scalaris as a new natural enemy of A. chinensis, and more study is needed on this species' behaviour and biological parameters as a parasitoid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese Tofu (1971), edited by the acclaimed female writer Lin Haiyin in Taiwan, came out in a rapidly changing Cold War order in East Asia. Focusing on this previously neglected work, this article offers a close reading of how a mundane foodstuff shed light on contested Chineseness, one informed by Lin's own gendered experience in the diaspora. Rather than reifying or essentializing "Chinese" foodways, tofu opened up the possibility of a more cosmopolitan geography. That geography pointed to former imperial frontiers, the Sinitic cultural sphere, and beyond. The book's afterlife in reform-era China underscores the ongoing debate over what it means to be Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first meta-study to analyze the effect size of remittances on the real exchange rate (RER). Using 426 estimates from 67 studies, we found that remittances appreciate RER; however, the effect size differs across countries. Compared to global estimates, the mean effect of remittances on RER is significantly larger for East Asia and the Pacific, whereas the same nexus is found to be significantly smaller for Latin America and the Caribbean. Furthermore, the synthesized effect of remittances on RER is found to be significantly positive for lower-middle-income countries. Our empirical examination shows that publication selection bias is less likely in the literature. We found a genuine effect of remittances on RER appreciation. This study also provides policy recommendations and presents suggestions for future research in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an English School–informed approach to theorize hegemonic order using an explicitly social lens. It conceptualizes the architecture of hegemonic order as consisting of three social elements—compact, structure, and processes—and emphasizes social exchange, power relationships, and negotiation as the bridges linking hegemony and order. Using the most significant contemporary case of hegemonic contestation, it employs this hegemonic order framework to analyze how, and with what effects on systemic change, China is contesting the US-led hegemonic order in East Asia. It finds that variation in the forms and effects of Chinese contestation in the security, institutional, and economic domains is explained by differences in the robustness of the US hegemonic social compact, and the complexity of the regional social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines effects of exchange rate changes on technology-intensive exports for five Northeast Asian economies: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Republic of Korea (ROK) and Taiwan. In these economies, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan have increased the shares of high-skill and technology-intensive exports (usually finished goods) while Japan has highly concentrated on medium-skill and technology-intensive exports (mainly intermediate goods). ROK has shifted its exports from finished to intermediate goods following Japan. Panel dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) with heterogeneous time trends was applied to trade data during the period 1995–2011. Our estimation results revealed that exports with high skill and technology intensity are more sensitive to real exchange rates in China and Taiwan, while exports with medium skill and technology intensity are very sensitive to exchange rate changes except for China. These results are consistent with the current roles of those economies in the regional production networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides an examination of recent scholarship on family migration for children's education in the context of East Asia, in an attempt to counter tendencies towards ‘adultism’ in migration studies [White, A., C. Ní Laoire, N. Tyrrell, and F. Carpena-Méndez. 2011. “Children's Roles in Transnational Migration.”Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies37 (8): 1159–1170]. It highlights the significant role that children do, in fact, play in precipitating contemporary migration, and educational migration provides an appropriate lens through which to do this. First, the paper considers some of the transnational household forms to have emerged in response educational migration. It then focuses on theorising the importantdriversunderpinning educational migration, including the acquisition (by children) of cultural and linguistic capital and the notion of children as ‘accumulation strategies’ [Katz, C. 2008. “Childhood as Spectacle: Relays of Anxiety and the Reconfiguration of the Child.”Cultural Geographies15: 5–17]. It then turns to consider some of the implications of such mobility, alighting in particular upon its gendered nature, and the ways in which local geographies invariably impinge upon migrant families’ strategic intentions. It concludes with some thoughts on how the role of children might be better integrated into understandings of migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in social protection in East Asia. The article focuses on two types of NGO roles in social protection—direct provision and indirect pressure—and examines how the relative proportions of the two types of roles vary by country in East Asia, depending on factors that are contextual (political democratization), pulling (developmental welfare state), or pushing (civil society). A comparative analysis of Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia reveals that each represents a differing mix of pressure and provision functions by NGOs in social protection. In Korea pressure seems to be the main role of NGOs; in Indonesia it is provision; while in Thailand pressure and provision are relatively evenly mixed. The study concludes with a summary of the research findings, discussion on the limitations of the paper, and suggestions for future research in order to develop more sophisticated accounts of NGO roles in social protection in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to gauge the impact of the global financial crisis on bilateral holdings of financial assets among East Asian countries. For this purpose, this paper uses the International Monetary Fund's Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS) data. We first present information about financial linkages between the CPIS-participating eight East Asian economies and other East Asian economies before and after the global financial crisis of 2008. We then apply the gravity model to assess the determinants of the cross-border holdings of foreign securities for four major East Asian financial investors – Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Singapore. We find only few changes in the bilateral holdings of financial assets among East Asian countries in the post-crisis period. In particular, our evidence does not indicate that intra-Asian financial integration has increased noticeably since the global crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale foreign investment in Africa's abundant but largely underutilized arable land has been criticised by international NGOs and social movements as ‘land grabbing’, which limits access of smallholder farmers to land, deprives local people of their livelihoods and threatens local and national food security across the continent. By way of contrast, many host governments and some leading international development agencies regard land-based investments as beneficial for development in terms of providing the necessary capital and technological know-how for modernising the region's neglected agriculture including take-off in agribusiness and agro-industrialisation, which is vital to much needed economic diversification in many African countries. East Asia's participation in the global land rush on Africa is examined from the standpoint of these two different perspectives: while China's growing presence and involvement in trade and investment in mining, energy and infrastructure in Africa is well known, less recognised is its involvement and those of other East Asian countries such as South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam in agriculture through large-scale land acquisitions. The development consequences and policy implications of these foreign land-based investments are analysed from a political economy perspective, which identifies motives, interests and benefits of the different actors and addresses the question of governance in terms of transparency and appropriate institutional arrangements to safeguard land rights and food security. In the bigger picture, the paper argues that the negative consequences of land grab has to be seen alongside the benefits flowing to Africa from growing economic relations with China and other dynamic East Asian economies and learning from the development experiences of those countries. African countries however need to re-assess the current approach and relationship with foreign land-based investors and decide how best this trend can be used to forward their economic and social agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The past two decades have been a period of active education reform throughout much of the world, and East Asia is no exception. This paper synthesizes findings from a series of empirical studies of educational reform in Thailand where an ambitious educational reform law was adopted in 1999. The purpose is to identify lessons learned about educational leadership and change that may be applicable both in Thailand and other parts of East Asia. The studies reveal successful reorientation of the nation’s educational system around a new vision and education goals. However, the vision of change has been much slower to penetrate the daily practice of Thailand’s 35,000 principals and 400,000 teachers. The paper identifies factors that are impacting successful reform in Thailand and draws implications for leading educational reform and change in the East Asia region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that to understand the relevance of developmental states in East Asia and elsewhere, we need to focus on the changing development agenda in the early twenty-first century, especially how this connects with the global challenge of climate change and thereby sustainable, low-carbon development. It combines theories on state capacity and ecological modernisation to form the 'new developmentalism' concept. This is applied to study revitalised and refocused forms of state capacity aimed at realising the transformative economic objectives associated with sustainable development. New developmentalism helps us understand not only current state capacity practice in a climate challenged world but also how we have moved beyond original conceptions of developmental statism. It may be understood in the wider context of the sustainable development agenda and climate interventionism. As is argued, new developmentalism is most clearly evident in East Asia but can be applied in a wider geographic sense where strong forms of developmental state capacity are exercised towards meeting transformative sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an advocate of 'comparative political theory,' Fred Dallmayr has long engaged with Confucianism with a new vision for democracy suitable in East Asia but little attention has been paid to his idea of Confucian democracy, which he presents as a specific mode of ethical or relational democracy. This paper investigates Dallmayr's ethical vision of Confucian democracy, first, by articulating his postmodern reconceptualization of democracy in terms of posthumanism and, second, by examining his post-humanist reevaluation of Confucian virtue ethics as a critical resource for ethical democracy. It argues that the ethical vision of Confucian democracy, though morally appealing, should not dismiss the important instrumental value of democracy as a political system and, rather, find a way to integrate democracy's instrumental and intrinsic values in a way that can enhance the qualitative relationality between people, political agents, and the common good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, the pendulum of regime change across the world has swung dramatically from democratization to autocratization. There has been much contention and debate about the extent, variation, and causes surrounding these processes. This special issue turns the spotlight away from regime change and political elites towards societal agents, particularly societal agents who mobilize and resist against autocratization unfolding within democratic and authoritarian regimes. In this introductory article, we review and critique the literature on autocratization studies, and introduce our concept of "agents of resistance." We argue that agents of resistance can develop and engage in repertoires against autocratization under any regime type. Specifically, the contributions in this special issue highlight seemingly mundane repertoires of resistance, and how they can grow through cumulative interactions among societal agents, and between societal agents and the state. Scholars should recognize the full spectrum of resistance and both their liberal and illiberal elements to better assess the impact on global trends of democratization or autocratization. Finally, this article discusses some methodological trends with regards to the existing literature, and introduces the contributions that compose this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The feasibility of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) is assessed against the established Suez Canal route (SCR) and the longer Cape of Good Hope route. The analysis reflects real practices of route choice for oil products between the Far East and Europe depending on varying market conditions. A required freight rate (RFR) model is developed based on both optimal speeds and real speeds. Automatic Identification System (AIS) data are used to identify route choice patterns and real speeds of Long Range 2 (LR2) tankers during 2013–2020. Cargo value on-board and alternative fuel types/modes based on oil, and current and future technologies of dual fuel Oil/Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) are considered. Cape is a competitive alternative under low fuel/commodity prices, and its use is explained, especially during the oil oversupply in 2015–2016 and 2020. The NSR is more competitive when moving towards short-hauls, under high fuel/commodity prices, and discounted or zero icebreaking fees, but is uncompetitive most of the times when ice damage repairs are included in the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An invitation for the submission of papers about global financial crisis and its policy implication on East Asia emerging economies is presented.

This article examines prospects for solidarity, defined as an ethos of collective responsibility that works across a political community's normative values and policy decisions, as a unifying idea that can inspire and promote steps toward regional political community across East Asia. Just as the European Union's (EU) founders and its past and present visionaries have appealed consistently to an inclusive, transnational model of solidarity in framing and pursuing European integration, notions of solidarity also contain important affinities with prospects for building an East Asian community. First, the paper examines how the idea of solidarity has evolved in European political thought and especially how solidarity has emerged repeatedly as one of the important concepts throughout the political development of the EU. Then, the paper turns to East Asia and considers the relevance of solidarity as an important principle in aspirations and endeavors toward the creation of an East Asian community. We base our analysis upon a variety of sources, including statements and speeches from key political actors, scholarly books and articles, and news accounts and commentaries. We illustrate how earlier manifestations of solidarity in East Asia have often been cast in ways that set the region apart from the rest of the world and have framed particular groupings of Asian countries in opposition to the West, and we argue that a redeployment of solidarity is needed in East Asia that instead emphasizes an ethos of collective responsibility among the principal national actors and external stakeholders within the region and beyond. In contrast with interpretations that suggest that the conditions for developing East Asian community are inescapably distinct from the circumstances in Europe during the second half of the twentieth century, we argue that the idea of solidarity has great potential to advance regional collaboration in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an integrated set of 4Cs indices, namely, centrality index, competition index, congestion index and concentration index to examine network effects in the East Asia container port industry. Empirical analysis confirms that larger ports enjoy greater direct network effects related to economies of scale, whereas, smaller ports leverage on indirect network effects to widen their scopes of influence to attract vessel calls. Ports tend to engage in more competitive interactions with their counterparts within the same region, even though cooperative relationships among ports across regions are beneficial. In the light of the empirical results, the paper proceeds to explain some important managerial and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that the Bolshevik Revolution took place in 1917, the Cold War is typically seen as a conflict that only emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War. This paper questions that orthodox interpretation by studying the tense relations that existed in the inter-war period between Britain and the Soviet Union. In particular it looks at Anglo-Soviet rivalry in East Asia in the mid-1920s when the Comintern inspired the Kuomintang in China to challenge British commercial interests in that country and the consequences that this competition had for relations down to 1940 and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High economic growth rates, the revolution in telecommunications and the end of the Cold War have brought about rapid and profound changes to the domestic as well as regional environments of Northeast Asian governments. The maritime sphere, where increasingly militarized state boundaries delineate political authority and economic activities link increasingly interdependent communities therein, bears high significance for the study of regional cooperation. This paper looks at how the maritime sphere of Northeast Asia is represented in common political and academic discourses of international relations. It finds that maritime affairs are firmly cast in the language of national security, and that empirical evidence against perceived threats and related security imperatives is often neglected if not completely ignored. The paper argues that the maritime space, due to its special character, has become the stage on which the consequences of modernity appear particularly strong. The relentless quest to develop and control the ocean clashes with the notion of the sea as a space of global trade and communication flow. At the same time, the ocean as an entity itself is excluded from the discourse because it is irreconcilable with the conception of the international system of sovereign territorial units. As a result, the maritime sphere is seen as a dividing element between nations rather than a connecting element, and salient environmental problems of the maritime space remain low on political and academic agendas. This is also a consequence of mainstream methods of political science that continue to reproduce discourses of territorial division and fail to offer alternative approaches suitable for the study of contemporary Northeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper initiates a comparative analysis of the labour process in three different social systems in order to shed light on the singularities of East Asian social forms. The point of departure for the project highlights the place of substitution central to the labour process in the West. There time's flow entails the replacement of human ingenuity by mechanical power and so distils into Western culture a fascination with the possibilities of substitution that governs much private and public life. It suggests the problem of ‘Civilisation’ derives from this process. By contrast, social life in the South Pacific, amidst cultures historically contiguous with those in East Asia, focuses on flows from original conditions. In this context social life follows organising sequences, not substitution. There follows and features a mimetic singularity of ascribed, ranked socially appropriate and chained action and reaction. East Asia shares with the South Pacific a mimetic aesthetic of sequence, rank and singularity, but there social process transforms into a centralising mass defined by epochal discontinuities organising the flows of life: Understanding that result is the ‘problem’ of East Asian sociality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Advocates of decentralisation often assert that, through an efficient division of labour, decentralisation can improve governance, especially the delivery of goods and services. However, arguments for decentralisation typically focus on the formal provision of services by sub-national government agencies that do not cater to the poor, particularly in developing countries, since the poor often do not have access to formal land and services. When national and local governments fail to provide urban services to the poor, other ‘intermediaries’ (quasi-formal and informal institutions) step in to provide and mediate access to these services. These intermediaries have been found to offer more accessible, but often, less affordable and/or reliable services. This paper draws on new empirical and analytical insights to understand the role that local governments play in bridging the formal–informal service delivery gap, focusing, in particular, on whether stronger policies for decentralisation lead to more innovation and/or involvement of the local government in the provision of services to informal communities. This question is critical to discussions on decentralisation, since local governments are often assumed to be best positioned to provide more equitable access to services and/or regulate provision by intermediaries. The findings suggest that decentralisation, combined with pro-poor national policies, provide a basis for greater innovation by local governments to address the needs of the poor. However, the sustainability and replication of these efforts may be limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the last 15 years, computers and electronic goods have been the leading export categories from East Asia to the rest of the world. They are produced within regional production and distribution networks. Japan, South Korea and Taipei, China, construct technology-intensive parts and components and ship them to China and ASEAN for processing by lower-skilled workers and reexport. This paper presents evidence that exchange rate appreciations in countries supplying parts and components to East Asian assembly economies would curtail these sophisticated exports, while exchange rate appreciations in assembly economies would not. The evidence also indicates that decreases in income in importing countries would significantly reduce computer and electronic goods exports. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

All economies experience peaks and troughs in their business cycles. This paper examines eight East Asian economies, employing a Bayesian dynamic factor model that allows the decomposition of aggregate shocks into country-specific, regional and world common business cycles. It therefore allows the identification of causes for major events experienced by these countries. Empirical evidences show that country-specific factors are the most important in determining the major events for all the countries examined here, implying the need for each country to rely more heavily on its own independent counter-cyclical policies. Although the regional factor plays a less important role than the country-specific factor, it accounts for a sizeable share in the output fluctuation of the region. The regional factor is most prevalent for Singapore, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand, indicating that a regional coordinated policy is rather more effective for these economies to respond to disturbances. The world factor explains only around 7% of the output variation in East Asia, which might explain why the East Asian economies are relatively insulated from the recent global financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the role of financial sector development in influencing the impact of exchange rate volatility on the exports of five emerging East Asian countries - China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand - using a GMM-IV estimation method. The results indicate that the effect of exchange rate volatility on exports is conditional on the level of financial sector development. The less financially developed an economy, the more its exports are adversely affected by exchange rate volatility. In addition, a stable exchange rate seems to be a necessary condition to achieve export promotion via a currency depreciation in these economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the economic impacts of the various sequential liberalization scenarios in East Asia, emphasizing the significance of the 'sequence' of the liberalization process in computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis. The major findings are as follows: (1) 'Sequence' matters in measuring the economic impacts of free trade agreement (FTA) scenarios in the region; (2) Scenario 1 (Korea-China FTA → Korea-Japan FTA → China-Japan FTA) is the sequence maximizing Korea's economic gains, whereas Scenario 3 (Korea-China-Japan FTA) is the one most preferred economically by China and Japan; (3) Korea's FTAs with the United States (US) and European Union (EU) can be evaluated as a preemptive strategic move, causing changes in FTA preferences of Korea and Japan; (4) the prediction of Bond and Baldwin (adjustment cost and juggernaut effect) and that of Evenett et al. (trade diversion effect) are supported by the empirical results that Korea's (China's) expected gains from northeast Asian FTA sequences increase (decrease) after Korea's FTAs with the US and EU are made; (5) predictions about the International Political Economy (IPE) theories (power consideration and domestic politics) upon the sequential FTA formations in East Asia are consistent with the findings above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for 11 East Asian countries over the period 1971-2005 by taking into account their strong relationships. Based on fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic OLS (DOLS) approaches, while there exists a strong relation running from economic growth to energy consumption, it is observed that the strong relationship which runs from energy consumption to economic growth is overwhelmingly rejected for all cases except Indonesia and the Philippines. Moreover the inverse relation between two variables is observed for these two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the empirical analysis on Rodrik's (1995a) domestic investment-led export growth model for East Asia to nine East Asian countries for a longer time period, 1960 through 2004, and tests whether openness Granger-caused investment or vice versa. Our results suggest that there can be no single conclusion about the role of investment in East Asia. Causality has also changed for some countries in different time periods. We question the exogeneity of the investment boom in East Asia, a key assumption made by Rodrik. Government's incentives encouraged investment in export industries through different channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's behaviour in East Asian financial cooperation has overall changed from passively responding to external pressures to taking proactive initiatives, which are highlighted by Chinese elites as evidence of a sense of responsibility. China has taken varied positions towards proposals for Asian financial regionalism, from 'silent' objection, to lukewarm or superficial support, to enthusiastic participation and substantial contribution, and this variance has not always taken place in a chronological order. Despite much speculation over the trajectory of China's role in East Asian regionalism, there has not been a study focused on China's policymaking towards East Asian financial cooperation. Therefore, this paper fills the gap by analysing the factors and policymaking processes that have led to those varied positions. It argues that China, recognising the momentum in the region to enhance cooperation, has replaced the blunt dismissals of proposals, particularly those from Japan, with a more subtle approach that is aimed at ensuring China's influence and promoting the image of a responsible great power; that the extent to which it can contribute to this process is mainly constrained by its economic conditions, particularly the financial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Korea has studied and perceived modern China in the last 100 years, to address the need to identify and understand both the ways in which China and Korea have perceived each other and the transformations of their perceptions throughout history. The paper aims to analyze not only the production and dissemination of knowledge within institutionalized academia, but also from outside its confines, tracing the locus of the field of modern Chinese history in Korea to its colonial period. In particular, it examines the output of the field after the year 2000, focusing on the following: (1) political history in relation to formation of the modern nation-state; (2) traditional and modern dichotomy; (3) is China one?; (4) East Asian perspective and relativization of China; and (5) return of interest in Korea. In so doing, this paper asserts the necessity for a co-employment of the 'dual peripheral perspective,' namely that of the East Asia oppressed by the West in the Western-centric world order, as well as the peripheral perspective born of those oppressed by the hierarchy within East Asia, to reach a universal understanding of one another in China and Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study evaluates the economy wide impact of trade liberalization in the ASEAN region along with China, Japan and Korea (ASEAN + 3) by the year 2020 using the GTAP framework. The study also assesses the environmental impact of the trade liberalization in the region focusing on the seven environmental indicators (CO2, CH4, N2O, BOD, COD, Suspended Solid and Industrial Waste). The result shows that the countries under agreement (ASEAN + 3) will benefit with increased output, expansion of trade and welfare due to trade reforms. Further, the integration will increase the global welfare, although the regions not under agreement in the world will show a decline in output growth. Vietnam will be gaining with the highest output growth among the ASEAN region; however, the impact on the environment would not be favourable. The environmental impact reveals a mixed outcome for participating countries under the agreement. The paper provides useful insight in pursuing greater trade liberalization among the countries under the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Asian nations have become increasingly diverse in their ethnic composition since the 1990s. A large proportion of recent immigrants consists of women from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, who migrated following their marriage to male citizens from South Korea and Taiwan. To study this new group of foreign residents, the governments of both Taiwan and South Korea have conducted national surveys since 2000. This paper conducts a content analysis of the questions of these surveys to elaborate a criticism of the ethnic statistics produced from them. These surveys provide relevant information on this group of new residents, but they also have the potential to reinforce existing negative stereotypes due to prior assumptions that shaped the content of questionnaires. The analysis reveals that the production of statistics on migrants is influenced by three ideologies: assimilation, patriarchy and nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the notion that subjective economic perceptions as well as objective economic conditions affect electoral outcomes has long been explored in advanced democracies and new democracies, evidence of the link between the economy and elections has been rarely found in East Asian countries. As economic issues have become salient since the 1997 financial crisis, political leaders' capacity to manage the economy has become one of the most important criteria in electoral choice in East Asia. This paper examines how economic issues influenced the results of the 2007 presidential election in South Korea. By making use of the 2007 Presidential Election Panel Study, this study examines the continuity of and changes in the Korean voters' electoral behavior. This study describes the political situation in the post-1997 financial crisis period under two liberal governments in Korea and introduces the processes and characteristics of electoral campaigns in the 2007 presidential election. This paper then explores the link between the economy and vote choice, focusing on whether economic issues were salient among the electorate, whether retrospective or prospective economic voting was prevalent among Koreans, and how the voters supported Lee Myung Bak across age groups, regions, and parties in the 2007 presidential election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Midgley's work on the 'social development approach' to social welfare made a significant contribution to the debate on social welfare in the 1990s. However, his conception of 'positive welfare' and the investment function of social welfare have been hijacked by neo-liberalists championing a 'work-first' social policy. This paper attempts to extend the debate on the 'social development approach', to reflect on concepts such as workfare, work, competitiveness, quality of services, and productivity. This paper starts with a review of the development of the 'social development approach', and shows how this has degenerated into 'capitalist productivism' in the context of East Asian welfare. It is argued that the over-emphasis on work and productivity in the East Asian context could worsen the disadvantaged position of less competitive groups such as women and low-income families. This paper calls for a fundamental reflection on concepts such as 'workfare', 'work' and 'productivity', and seeks to reinstate the 'social' in the social development approach. [image omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is built around a critique of the recent book by McNeely and Wolverton, entitled Reinventing Knowledge. The paper first contests the concepts of 'knowledge' and 'institutions', before arguing that the 'systems' within which knowledge is embedded are in reality growing more and more complex. The huge scale and scope of the present-day Internet in our view invalidate their rather one-dimensional view of knowledge accumulation and their downplayed interpretation of the impact of the Internet. Our historical studies indicate that the Internet 'revolution' lies at the core of the 'Third Industrial Revolution' the advanced industrial nations are currently experiencing, which seems likely to transform the worlds that such nations are facing, not just in certain technologies or products, but in broader domains of the organization of production and innovation, their management and governance. The final section of the paper assesses the recent 'growth dynamics' in Eastern and Southern Asia and finds mostly confirmation of the points already made, in societies that eagerly await them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines economic regionalism in East Asia with a focus on the key issues in harmonizing bilateral free trade agreements. The ASEAN+1 free trade agreements with China, South Korea and Japan represent the first attempts to structure cooperation in trade across Southeast and Northeast Asia. It is therefore important to examine the coverage of these agreements and the extent to which they actually liberalize trade. This study focuses on major choices made in the negotiation of the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement and the ways in which these choices help or hinder the consolidation of economic regionalism. The results achieved in the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement are limited at best. The agreement does establish some new areas of cooperation among the signatories but fails to address important issues for regionalism such as labor mobility. It also makes limited progress in harmonizing and liberalizing rules of origin. The ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement applies product-specific rules to fewer categories of goods than most of Japan's bilateral agreements with ASEAN members but those rules in place are still very restrictive. Moreover, the parties to the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement have the option of applying the rules of their bilateral agreement if it provides more favorable treatment. Thus, there is no guarantee the more liberal terms of the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement will be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extraordinary growth and reduction in inequalities achieved between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s by the High Performing Asian Economies (HPAEs) — namely Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan (collectively called "the four tigers"), Japan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand — has been discussed at great length in the economic literature. However, no clear explanation has been suggested for the poor performance of other Asian economies, like India, which share the HPAEs geographical proximity and similar economic structures. This paper shows that the stark contrast between the high growth rates and declining income inequalities of HPAEs on one side, and low growth rates and stable (or rising) income inequalities of India and other Asian countries on the other side, may at least in part be explained by the different role that human capital has played in those economies between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to determine the relative position (distances) of East Asian countries (including South East Asia) within their own geographical area and in relation to the rest of the world. For this purpose, Balassa's (1965) 'revealed comparative advantage' (RCA) in exports will be used to assess trade performance and economic growth. We use multidimensional scaling to ascertain our contentions. First, East Asian countries are forming a 'flying geese' formation whose leader is Japan followed by Korea and Taiwan and further behind China and the ASEAN countries. Second, this flying geese flock in terms of RCA ranks is paralleled with a similar flying geese formation in terms of economic development. Furthermore the mapping of 100 countries (and a close-up of 45 countries) tell us as to how all relevant countries are positioned in terms of 14 industrial sectors (here we also used factor analysis to classify these sectors). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an overview on international marriage in East and Southeast Asia. It first reviews the available data on the incidence and trends of transnational marriage. It then discusses the factors generally cited as contributing to the rising incidence of international marriage in the region: the increased mobility of population, particularly with respect to tourism, business travel, short-term employment and international study; and marriage market issues in a number of countries of the region, leading to deliberate and targeted search for spouses in other countries. It also reviews the types of international marriages in the region, including the national, ethnic and social characteristics of spouses in such marriages. Finally, it discusses the issues and problems covered and not (or inadequately) covered in the literature of international marriage in East and Southeast Asia in relation to the questions of rights and of the boundaries and sovereignty of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the state of governance for sustainability in East Asian global cities. Most conceptualizations on the governance of sustainable development are based on Western democratic contexts with a market-based economy and an active citizenry. Capacity in fostering partnerships and consensus building among different stakeholders is often identified as an essential quality in implementing sustainable development. The four East Asian cities discussed in this paper are fundamentally different: they all have a "strong" government exerting major direct or indirect influences on market sectors that are at varying stages of development and their civil societies are relatively immature, if not inactive. Given the central role played by the state in these political economies, this paper argues that capturing the government's perceptions of and commitments towards sustainable development is instrumental in understanding their sustainability practice. A small-scale benchmarking exercise is carried out to verify this proposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures the knowledge-based development of nine countries in the two categories of developed and emerging economies. The developed economies selected include the three bench-marking developed countries from three different regions; they are the United States from the North American region, Finland from Europe and Japan, Korea and Singapore from the Asia region. The emerging economies, on the other hand, include China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. The performances of these countries are evaluated by two means: the radar charts and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The first analysis shows that developed countries have accumulated more knowledge stock. They have also shaped a better resource environment relative to emerging countries. On the other hand, the DEA scores indicate that four of the small countries, Finland, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea, are relatively more efficient in generating further K-outputs when compared with the large economic giants such the US and Japan, and also other less-developed peers in term of GNI per capita. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private supplementary tutoring has long been a major phenomenon in parts of East Asia, including Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. In recent times it has grown dramatically in other parts of Asia and in Africa, Europe and North America. The factors underlying the growth of private tutoring vary, but in all settings it has major implications for learning and livelihood. Families with the necessary resources are able to secure not only greater quantities but also better qualities of private tutoring. Children receiving such tutoring are then able to perform better in school, and in the long run to improve their lifetime earnings. By contrast, children of low‐income families who do not receive such benefits may not be able to keep up with their peers and may drop out of school at an earlier age. Tutoring also of course has a direct impact on the livelihoods of the tutors, providing employment and incomes for a range of professionals and amateurs of different age groups. The dynamics of inter‐relationships are complex, and vary from one setting to another. This paper argues that private supplementary tutoring deserves much more attention from policy makers and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to develop a multi-commodity network model to analyse the flow of containers within the Asia Pacific context. The model is used to evaluate the impact of container throughput in Asia's port by varying terminal handling charges and turnaround time. The three main regions analysed are north-east Asia, east Asia (Chinese port region) and south east Asia. Using the model, it could be shown that Busan port, which is an important transhipment hub in north-east Asia, could boost the container activities in the north-eastern part of China by improving its service quality. It is also found that the efficiency of the land link between Hong Kong and mainland China plays a crucial role for the future of Hong Kong port. While Singapore port maintains its position as a transhipment hub in south-east Asia, there would be expected competition from neighbouring low costs ports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]