Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: Laldinkima Sailo, NUS
In a recent survey released by the Canada-based Fraser Institute, Indonesia was ranked as the world’s least-attractive place to do business in the mining sector. And how to deal with foreign investors was the subject of intense debate in Indonesia last year after the government decided to make changes that required foreign Read more…
Author: Lynette Ong, University of Toronto
Credit has been the subject of much scrutiny in China, where there have been broad concerns about rising non-performing loans and wasteful lending to state-owned enterprises.
While major government-owned banks steal the most headlines, it’s also important to understand how credit operates at the grassroots levels. Unsurprisingly, that system has risks and inefficiencies of its own. Read more…
Authors: Rohit Sinha and Geethanjali Nataraj, ORF
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to Japan will do as much to invigorate the Indian growth story as it will to strengthen diplomatic relations in the Asia Pacific.
With India investing heavily in infrastructure, Japanese assistance — both technical and financial — has been of great benefit. Read more…
Author: Razeen Sally, NUS
The defining feature of early 21st-century international trade is global value chains (GVCs).
Trade in GVCs is the fastest growing part of international trade, and a critical driver of productivity, growth and employment in both developed and developing countries. Read more…
Author: Yiping Huang, Peking University and ANU
The advent of the Asian century inevitably implies a greater global role for the Chinese economy. While the shift of global economic gravity towards East Asia started almost half a century ago, it was the emergence of China as a global economic power that finally became the cornerstone of the Asian century. Read more…
Author: Peter Warr, ANU
In Thailand, the term ‘populism’ does not yet have the negative connotations it has earned in Latin America and Europe, but the trend is in that direction.
This was the message of a seminar entitled ‘Rethinking Populist Policy: From Thaksin to Yingluck’, held on 30 May at the Thailand Development Research Institute in Bangkok. Read more…
Authors: Masahiro Kawai and Ganeshan Wignaraja, ADBI
Today Asia is a world leader in free trade agreements (FTAs) with 76 concluded agreements as of April 2013. With this high number of FTAs, Asian economies face key challenges regarding their use, scope, and impact on regionalisation trends. Read more…
Author: Shankaran Nambiar, MIER
Najib Razak and his team have won the 2013 Malaysian general elections.
He has now earned his mandate but the period ahead still holds uncertainty. Malaysia will almost certainly experience political unpredictability; hopefully, this will not spill over into economic indeterminacy. Read more…
Authors: Vikas Kumar, APU, and Poonam Singh, NISM
In December 2012, amidst concerns over economic slowdown and policy paralysis, the Indian government introduced the Competition (Amendment) Bill, 2012, which attempts to amend the Competition Act.
The Competition Act is being amended for a third time since it was first enacted in 2002, this time addressing among other things the prohibition on abuse of dominant position. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW Canberra
The Abe administration is releasing, in stages, the last of the ‘three arrows’ of Abenomics: a growth strategy designed to lift Japan’s competitiveness through pro-growth reforms.
It is being done under the mantra of ‘no growth without action’ (kōdō nakushite seichō nashi), in the fashion of former Prime Minister Koizumi’s ‘no growth without reform’ slogan. Read more…
Author: Ranjit Goswami, IMT Nagpur
Noam Chomsky once said that ‘reform is a change that you’re supposed to like. So as soon as you hear the word reform, you kind of reach for your wallet and see who’s lifting it’.
This statement is all the more true given that economic reform does not mean the same thing across the world. Not all countries choose to take the IMF-driven, Washington Consensus path of economic reform. China’s ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ is the clearest example of this. Read more…
Author: Pravakar Sahoo, Delhi University
India’s current account deficit is expected to be 5 per cent of GDP this fiscal year. With the deficit still growing and FDI inflows declining (with the exception of the numbers for January 2013), the government needs to facilitate investment in the economy.
Author: Anwar Nasution, University of Indonesia
Bank Indonesia’s (BI) recent package of regulations might help the financial industry in the short term by forcing foreign companies to provide capital to Indonesia.
But unfortunately the Bank did not address badly needed structural reforms. Read more…
Author: Jayant Menon, ADB and ANU
Free trade agreements (FTAs) have been proliferating in Asia for more than a decade, but international fragmentation of production and resultant cross-border production networks have been growing for a much longer period.
It is by using those networks that Asia first became known as the world’s factory. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, Cambridge, Massachusetts
With the yen falling to below JPY100/US$1 for the first time since 2009 and the Nikkei posting five-year highs, analysts have begun declaring victory for the Abe administration’s campaign against deflation and slow growth.
But it is far too early to draw conclusions about the success of Abenomics — given that deflation continues — and Read more…