Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, is set to make a hugely important visit to the US next week, prior to succeeding President Hu Jintao as China’s next president later this year.
The visit will set the stage for interaction between the next generation of Chinese leaders and American political leadership and help to shape how the most important bilateral relationship in the world will be managed over the medium-term future. Read more…
Author: Nicholas Lardy, PIIE
China’s 2009-10 stimulus program was quite successful: growth ticked down only slightly in 2009 while the rest of the world suffered its sharpest decline in 60 years.
But the stimulus program was not intended to address the longer-term structural problems that in 2007 led China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, to characterise the country’s growth as ‘unsteady, imbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable’. Read more…
Author: Choong Yong Ahn, Chung-Ang University
Since the fourth quarter of 2010, the global economy has faced serious uncertainty and a turbulent outlook.
Both the US and Europe have gloomy growth prospects due to a lack of credible medium-term plans for debt reduction in the US and the sovereign debt crisis in southern Europe. Read more…
Author: Andrew Elek, ANU
The World Bank recently published a valuable research paper (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5940 by Justin Yifu Lin and Doerte Doemeland) which presents the evidence needed to justify a globally coordinated initiative in carefully selected infrastructure investment.
A G20 initiative in 2012 could make this happen. Read more…
Author: Dilaka Lathapipat, TDRI
There is a widespread belief among Thais that immigrants reduce local workers’ job opportunities and depress wages.
This is evident from an opinion survey study conducted in late 2010 by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Triangle Project on public attitudes to migration and migrant workers. Read more…
Author: Abdur Chowdhury, Marquette University
Joining the WTO in 2012 marks the culmination of a long period of transformation for Russia, which first applied for membership in June 1993, and finally had its terms of entry accepted on 16 December.
To join the WTO, Russia has had to overhaul its national laws to bring them into conformity with the global trade regime, and work out bilateral market-opening deals with all other members. Russia has agreed to slash tariffs, get rid of industrial subsidies and allow foreign companies greater access to its domestic market. Read more…
Author: Nandita Dasgupta, UMBC
India’s food price inflation has been a major driving factor behind the country’s accelerating inflation over the past few years.
In particular, agricultural food prices rose sharply during 2011. Read more…
Author: M. Govinda Rao, NIPFP
India’s economy was one of the earliest to stage a turnaround after the global financial crisis.
The decisions taken in early 2008 to increase public-sector wages, forgive loans for farmers who had borrowed from the banks, and massively expand the rural-employment guarantee scheme assisted the economy before the global financial crisis unfolded in the last quarter of the year. Read more…
Author: Doan Hong Quang, World Bank
Consensus-based policy making is a salient feature of Vietnam, where important decisions are collectively made.
Consensus is needed not only for the formulation of a reform vision but also for the elaboration and implementation of this vision. Read more…
Author: Vikas Kumar, Azim Premji University
India’s decision against allowing FDI in the retail sector has evoked strong reactions. According to the Indian Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce (PSCC), this sector accounts for about 10 per cent of GDP and is the second-largest employer after agriculture.
It employs about 40 million people (8 per cent of the workforce) and thereby affects as much as one-sixth of India’s population. This sector absorbs large numbers of unemployed youth, particularly in towns and cities, by offering them entrepreneurial opportunities. Read more…
Author: Bandid Nijathaworn, Thai Bond Market Association
The development of Thailand’s financial sector has been a story of restructuring, adjustment and renewal, following the devastating effects of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s.
The crisis was very costly to the Thai financial system, with an estimated gross fiscal loss equivalent to about 33 per cent of 2006 GDP. Read more…
Author: Pasuk Phongpaichit, Chulalongkorn University and Kyoto University
Thailand has become a wealthier but also more unequal society over the past few decades.
Until recently inequality was not a burning issue — but Thailand’s prominent political convulsions have changed this.
Read more…
Author: Mahani Zainal Abidin, ISIS Malaysia
After stating in 2010 his vision to transform Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib’s task in 2011 was to turn vision into reality.
The Government Transformation Programme made some progress on this front, improving the delivery of some public services. A number of Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) projects also delivered higher private-sector investments and successful large property joint ventures between the government and the private sector, both of which helped revive the investment climate. Read more…
Author: John West, MrGlobalization
How does a Cold War organisation like the OECD respond to the end of the Cold War? Does it try to hang on to its former identity? Or does it embrace the new ‘age of globalisation’?
The end of the Cold War in 1989 represented a victory of values and ideology — the triumph of pluralistic democracy, respect for human rights and the market economy — for the OECD and its member countries. Read more…
Author: Pisit Leeahtam, Chiang Mai University
After facing two violent street protests in the last two years, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s coalition government started 2011 in relative calm.
The then-opposition Pheu Thai Party was without a visible leader, and many saw the red shirts as still suffering from the May 2010 violence and thus unlikely to stage another street protest. Read more…
