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How much is hegemony and how much is self-determination in the higher education systems in Southeast Asia? This paper argues that while the question of centre and periphery is still relevant to the analysis of international university systems, the analytical frameworks from which it has arisen may lose viability in the long term. Southeast Asian states are making use of higher education to act in ways that will contribute to the altering of their peripheral position in the global economic and political system. While changes in Southeast Asian higher education are closely tied to global markets and follow what sometimes appears to be a dependent pattern of adaptations driven by Western developed economies, the paper argues that there is also a significant amount of resistance. As Southeast Asian countries adapt in ways that help embed economic globalisation within their national landscape, the manner in which the adaptation occurs is more selective, open, and democratic than before. Moreover, while global communication with core (centre) university systems has been more open and transparent, the system is closed to direct intervention from the outside, making hegemony a less plausible explanation for the manner in which the system is reacting within the new global environment of financial interdependency.

This study examines generalized trust and trust in institutions in Confucian Asia, covering six countries namely, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, and one dependent region, Hong Kong. Using data from the 2006 AsiaBarometer Survey, our study affirms the reliability and validity of using a two-item scale to measure generalized trust. Our analysis suggests that due to demographic differences, there are variations in the level of generalized trust of countries in Confucian Asia, despite the fact that these societies share a similar background in Confucian philosophy. The relationships between generalized trust and political trust, and between generalized trust and trust in public institutions, are weak but positive. The positive relationship between generalized trust and trust in economic institutions is only significant for some of the economies, while trust in international institutions has the weakest relationship with generalized trust for all societies. We conclude the paper with research implications.

This paper argues that, apart from exchange-rate aspects, the East Asian economic crisis has looked very similar to a domestic banking crisis arising from boom and bust cycles in bank lending and capital investment. One of the key determinants of the boom-bust cycle in East Asia was the sharp appreciation of the yen against the dollar between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, and its subsequent depreciation. Real investment and speculative financial capital within and into East Asia responded too much to the yen movements. The paper also discusses factors behind large medium-term movements in the yen-dollar rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the evolution of APEC and the rejection of Japan's 1997 AMF proposal reflect a failure of Japanese and US leadership. Not only have the two countries failed to exercise either individual or shared regional leadership. Instead, both have used their considerable structural power negatively to block the other's proposals for regional collective action, rather than positively to exercise leadership. After developing the concepts of leadership and blocking power, the paper provides case studies of the APEC and AMF. It concludes that if a post-hegemonic US no longer has the willingness and/or the ability to undertake collective action single-handedly, and if in a post-Cold War world neither the US nor Japan has sufficient incentives to bridge their differences and sacrifice some interests to achieve a unified stance, then continued stalemate and under-supply of regional collective goods can be expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"In this paper, our main aim is to examine long-term trends of Japanese interprefectural migration after the War by using a Markov migration model.... We observed dependence of in- and out-migration on the size of populations by prefecture.... Major findings based on the time-series observation of stationary distributions by year are as follows: First from [the 1950s] to 1970 migrants tended to concentrate [on] densely populated industrialized prefectures (Tokyo, Osaka and Aichi), but after that during [the 1970s] populations have redistributed to provincial prefectures. Reconcentration of population to [the] Tokyo area again occurred around [the mid-1980s, but] it ceased at the beginning of the [1990s] in accordance with economic recession.... It can be concluded that [the] recent Japanese interprefectural migration system has lost its potential power to redistribute populations." (SUMMARY IN ENG), (excerpt)

"Based on the data on 11,470 household heads and spouses in a national survey [in Japan], this paper studies the selective effects of marriage migrations on five types of prefectures: (1) metropolitan core, (2) suburban, (3) regional growth pole, (4) peripheral non-kaso, and (5) peripheral kaso prefectures. The selective effects are examined in terms of five personal factors: sex, nativity, education, period of marriage, and sibling status.... Primary and onward migrations were much more important than return migrations so that marriage migrations increased the non-native's share of the population of every type of [prefecture]. Marriage migrations resulted in further deterioration of the quality of human capital in peripheral prefectures. The transition from high to moderate economic growth in the early 1970s was accompanied by sharp reversals in the net transfers of marriage migrants in metropolitan cores and regional growth poles in opposite directions." (SUMMARY IN JPN), (excerpt)

"Urban concentration (or primacy) and inequality (in size distribution of income) are expected to follow bell shaped curves through the development process. Spatial convergence (through investments in transportation etc.) is expected to precede income convergence. Using longitudinal data from six Asian countries (Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and India) this paper shows that (i) the bell shapes for urban concentration and income inequality generally hold, and (ii) the temporal relationship between the curve peaks is determined by geographical factors (for urban concentration); income inequality is seen to be more policy amenable.", (excerpt)

"Do poor economies grow faster than rich ones? This...economic question...is analyzed in this paper using two regional data sets: 47 prefectures in Japan and 48 states of the United States. We find clear evidence of convergence in both countries: poor prefectures and states grow faster. We also find that there is intraregional as well as interregional convergence. We analyze the cross-sectional standard deviation across prefectures and states.... Finally we study the determinants of the rates of regional in-migration.... We find little evidence in favor of the argument that population movements are the reason why we find convergence across economies.", (excerpt)

"This paper aims to study the pattern of urbanization and the evolution of [the] relationship between rural-urban migration and the degree of economic development taking Gross National Product...into consideration. Intercensal age-specific rural net out-migration rates are also estimated from [tabulations] of the proportion of rural population of India by age through a recently developed procedure based on generalized stable population by Stupp (1989). A comparative study is also made between [the] survival column of India with a developed nation like Japan.", (excerpt)

"In this paper the impacts of structural changes in local industries on interregional gross migration in Japan for 1974-85 are empirically examined. Structural changes in local industries, which are represented by a simple index of local employment growth dispersion across sectors, induce interregional migration, as well as intraregional migration. The estimation results with pooled data support this hypothesis. The impacts of structural changes in local industries are different across gross migration flows (rural-urban, urban-rural, urban-urban, and rural-rural migration), as are the impacts of other determinants of migration such as earnings differentials, aggregate employment growth, national unemployment, distance, and age structure.", (excerpt)

Tracing the origin of political economy as a class-science, this paper focuses on the political economy of population growth. Exposing the limitations of Malthusian ideas and their invalidity even for the capitalist economies, it discusses the subsequent revival of the Malthusian model during the period of de-colonization and the misinterpretation of the relationship between population growth and development in the developing and developed countries. Taking India, China, and Japan as some case studies, the paper examines the relationship between birth rate levels and some correlates. It elaborates on the Indian experience, emphasizing the association of population growth with poverty and unemployment and lays bare some of the hidden causes of these phenomena. The authors examine some interstate variations in India and identify constraints and prospects of the existing population policy. The paper proposes outlines of a democratic population policy as an integral part of India's development strategy which should recognize human beings not simply as consumers but also as producers of material values. It pleads for 1) restructuring of property relations; 2) bringing down the mortality rates and raising of the literacy levels, especially among females; and 3) improving nutritional levels, as prerequisites for bringing down birth rates.

"This paper presents a new method that can be used to reveal the policy objectives with which actual public investment decisions are consistent. Japanese regional investment expenditures from 1958 to 1978 are analyzed, and the dominant policies in effect during this period are identified using this method. A connection between Japanese regional public investment policies and the convergence of population growth across regions is suggested." The suitability of redistributive investment policies as a mechanism for the spatial stabilization of other populations experiencing rapid economic growth is noted., (excerpt)

Long working hours and a lack of sleep have been suggested to negatively affect the safety of workers. Here, we examined the association between long working hours/sleep-related problems and near-misses/injuries in industrial settings using a nationally representative sample of workers in Japan. Based on the composition ratio of workers by industry, sex, and age in Japan, data from a web-based cross-sectional survey for 18,682 participant full-time workers (7,098 female and 11,584 male; mean age, 43.7 [standard deviation 11.1] years) were analyzed. Nearly 30% and 5% of participants reported any types of near-misses during the past six months and injuries during the past year, respectively. For all types of near-misses and some types of injuries, a significant difference in frequency distribution was observed by industry. After adjustment for demographic, job-, and life-related variables, participants who worked long hours (i.e., more than 51 hours per week) were more likely to report job-related near-misses/injuries than those who worked 35–40 hours per week. The presence of sleep-related problems was also significantly related to near-misses and injuries. However, while sleep-related problems were significantly associated with near-misses/injuries in all industries, the association between long working hours and near-misses/injuries differed by industry. Odds ratios for near-misses/injuries were strongly significant in the “transport/postal services” industry for those who worked more than 51 hours per week compared to those who worked 35–40 hours per week. Comprehensive protective measures for workers, including (1) reducing total hours of service/job-related fatigue, (2) maintaining sufficient sleep hours/good sleep, and (3) increasing awareness about the impact of overwork/long working hours and sleep-related problems on workers’ safety among employers, workers, clients/customers, and the general public might be effective for preventing near-misses and injuries in industrial settings among workers, especially those who work long hours in the “transport/postal services” industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bitcoin market becomes the focus of the economic market since its birth, and it has attracted wide attention from both academia and industry. Due to the absence of regulations in the Bitcoin market, it may be easier to bring some kinds of illegal behaviors. Thus, it raises an interesting question: Is there abnormity or illegal behavior in Bitcoin platforms? To answer this question, we investigate the abnormity in five leading Bitcoin platforms. By analyzing the financial index, i.e. the normalized logarithmic price return, we find that the properties of price return in bitFlyer are completely different from others. To find the possible reasons, we find that the abnormal ask price and bid price appear simultaneously in bitFlyer, which may be potentially linked to either price manipulation or money laundering. It verifies our conjecture that there may be abnormity or price manipulation in Bitcoin platforms. Furthermore, our findings in price return could also provide an innovative and effective method to detect the abnormity in Bitcoin platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how negative shocks due to, for example, natural disasters propagate through supply chains. We apply a simulation technique to actual supply chain data covering most Japanese firms. To investigate the property of the propagation in the network, we test different types of artificial negative shocks. We find that, first, network structures severely affect the speed of propagation in the short run, and the total loss in the long run. The scale-free nature of the actual supply-chain network—that is, the power-law degree distribution—leads to faster propagation. Second, more intensive damages—that is, more damages suffered by fewer firms—result in faster propagation than extensive damages of the same total size. Third, the actual supply-chain network has innate robustness that comes from substitutability of supplies. If the supply-chain network has severe substitutability, the propagation of negative shocks becomes substantially large. Fourth, direct damages in urban regions promote faster propagation than those in rural regions. Fifth, different sectoral damages show significant differences in the speed of propagation. Finally, we check the indirect damage triggered by a single firm’s loss: 9.7% of all firms contribute to significant loss, and this loss accounts for more than 10% of the damage to the entire production. The simulations conspicuously show that different direct damages, even if they have the same total magnitude of damages, can generate considerably different damages because of the structure of the supply-chain network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large, extensively diversified pyramidal business groups of listed firms dominate the histories of developed economies and the economies of developing economies. While such groups (called zaibatsu in Japan) are thought to have provided coordination for big push growth successfully in pre-second-world-war Japan after a state-run big push failed, it is still being debated whether such a pyramidal business group driven big push coordination exists in developing countries elsewhere in Asia. We hypothesize that pyramidal business groups can be private-sector mechanisms for coordinating big push growth, provided that first, competition between rival groups induces a sufficiently high level of coordination efficiency, and second, conditions exist for maintaining economic openness and basic infrastructure and legal institutions. Another condition that must be satisfied for a country to sustain economic growth after its big push phase is complete is a timely demise of business groups. Where these criteria are not met, growth stalls and the few pyramidal business groups become too powerful to dislodge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central component of the Japanese government's foreign policy after the First World War was its desire to control and secure access to strategic minerals necessary for munitions production. Two-thirds of the world supply of these strategic minerals—including metals like copper, lead, molybdenum, nickel, tungsten and zinc—was primarily under the commercial control of American and British interests. American geologists and foreign policy experts assumed that Anglo-American sanctions combined with the lack of mineral deposits in East Asia would prevent Japanese attempts at economic autarky. Yet these experts failed to appreciate the importance of the Korean peninsula. Korean minerals—in particular tungsten—enabled the Japanese war economy to partially withstand the economic strangulation of the Allied blockade and bombings in the last years of the war. After the war, Korean scholars documented, in great detail, the Japanese exploitation of these resources, yet this scholarship does not show how these Korean resources fit into the larger resource base of the so-called "Co-Prosperity Sphere." This article examines the origins, development, and consequences of Japan's exploitation of Korean mineral resources from 1910 to 1945 through a case study of tungsten and uses two distinct sets of sources: first, reports and studies produced by American geologists from the 1920s to the postwar period and, second, Japanese mining reports and statistics produced in Korea and Japan during the colonial period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the subprime-induced financial crisis broke out in the U.S. housing sector in the summer of 2007 and mushroomed into a global financial crisis by September 2008, it was widely believed that the Asian economies, especially the 'big four'-Japan, China, South Korea, and India-would remain largely immune from the worst of the crisis. However, this assumption has proven to be false. All four countries have felt the negative impact of the financial contagion-albeit differently. Whereas China and India have been moderately impacted, Japan and South Korea have experienced heightened financial instability, sharp economic contraction, and a deep recession. What explains the big four's vulnerability to the crisis, and why have Japan and South Korea been affected more negatively than China and India? How have the four countries responded to the crisis, and what can they do to further insulate their economies from the vagaries of the global financial markets? In this article, the author addresses these interrelated issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to provide a corrective to a marked Sinocentrism in contemporary debates on regional integration in Asia. In order to do so, firstly, as a heuristic device, a crucial distinction is made between 'regionalization', as involving multifaceted integrative socio-economic processes, and 'regionalism', defined as a form of identity construction akin to nationalism. Secondly, a degree of historical depth is proposed to better explain recent developments. Finally, throughout the article, an interdisciplinary approach is taken involving employing realist, historical/sociological institutionalist and constructivist perspectives in the area of international relations. The first two East Asian summits are contextualized in relation to various conceptualizations of an Asian Community over the last century or so. Particular attention is given to the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung as a watershed in this evolution. Varying conceptions of East Asia as part of a larger, transpacific regional entity (APEC) and in, and of, itself (East Asian Economic Group/ASEAN +3) are examined. In situating the first two East Asian summits five developments of significance are examined. These are: a continuing Japanese role in setting the regional agenda; the ambivalence of China's positioning vis-à-vis neighbouring countries; the re-entry of Central Asia in the Asian regional equation; India's 'return to Asia'; and efforts to maintain ASEAN's centrality in regional construction. These factors, it is argued, are militating towards a return to the Sino-Indic Asia of Bandung. It is thus suggested that notions of an Asian Community involving only Northeast and Southeast Asia are now rejoined by a concept of a Greater Asia. While the historical roots of this conception partly explain its salience, it nevertheless competes with other complementary - and antagonistic - definitions of an Asian Community of more recent lineage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Respondents from five Asian countries were surveyed in terms of their consumer ethnocentrism, animosity, and attribution towards the USA and Japan in the context of the Asian economic crisis. The results indicated that the more severely hit a country was, the more ethnocentric respondents were. In general, animosity towards the USA was higher than towards Japan with regard to the Asian crisis. Koreans held the greatest stable animosity towards the Japanese because of the atrocities experienced during the Second World War. Respondents attributed the blame of the Asian crisis more to themselves. They also felt that they and the Japanese could have controlled the turn of events during the crisis. Implications arising from the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For much of the late twentieth century, the twenty-first was anticipated as the coming 'Asian Century'. Japan's economic woes and the broader financial crisis of 1997-98 put a dent in those expectations. The information revolution adds another complication; because of it, Asian economic development in this new century is likely to resemble a disorganised game of leapfrog. The information revolution makes 'leapfrogging' possible because it alters the conventional categories of 'developed', 'developing', and 'underdeveloped' nations. Rapid technological change can push yesterday's losers forward, and burden some more 'advanced' economies with the weight of yesterday's technological infrastructure. In social terms, a pernicious 'digital divide' is emerging. The significant growth in computer ownership and usage has been concentrated within certain income levels, educational backgrounds, demographic groups and geographical areas. This digital abyss is a daunting problem for India, China and Japan, despite their governments' continuing efforts to keep up with and exploit the opportunities offered by information technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]