Asian Economic Community

Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) doctrine has been a significant topic in the domain of international finance and economics. Several studies have been conducted on the issue of testing the soundness of the PPP hypothesis but a very few studies have been done for developing nations, particularly for India. This study tried to empirically test the PPP hypothesis for Indian rupee/US dollar (INR/USD) rate using quarterly data for the period 2001:1-2024:2. The stationarity of the relevant variables is examined by using the econometric tool of Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Phillip-Perron (PP) tests. To confirm empirical validity of PPP hypothesis, OLS regression technique is used. Autocorrelation problem is removed with the help of AR1 (Cochrane-Orcutt) and maximum likelihood procedures. The PPP model is estimated in naïve static form as well as the partial adjustment framework. The partial adjustment framework helps to find out the speed with which the actual exchange rate moves towards and reaches its equilibrium level. The empirical findings show that absolute PPP does not work well in its naïve static form, but it works well in partial adjustment framework with 2.5 quarters being speed of adjustment. The relative PPP is found to work well in both frameworks with 1.5 quarters as speed of adjustment. Thus, the policymakers may use the PPP hypothesis for exchange rate forecasting. Also, it is suggested that the policymakers should carefully consider the effect of internal or external shocks on PPP and tailor their monetary policy measures accordingly.

The mission statement connects vision and operations. It supports communication between organizations and stakeholders. Readability of the mission statement is important for business communication. This research examines the characteristics of mission statements. The study analyzes the readability of mission statements from several technology startup companies. The research uses Gunning's Fog Index with data from 18 Thai technology companies listed on the Market for Alternative Investment (MAI). Counting methods are applied in the data collection and analysis process. The statistics used include frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and Gunning's Fog Index (GFI). The findings show that most mission statements contain fewer than 250 words and consist of 3 to 4 sentences. The readability level ranges from acceptable to ideal. Most readers rate the mission statements as optimal at 38.89 percent and acceptable at 33.33 percent. These two groups of businesses succeed in interacting with stakeholders to create mutual business value. Only 11.11 percent of the businesses receive ratings in the difficult category and should revise the goal statement. To support long-term growth, technology startups should prepare mission statements that show readiness in terms of customer perspectives, internal operations, financial performance, and learning and development. These findings may be useful for both businesses and stakeholders. The study is relevant to the technology industry and other sectors. The contribution to sustainable development goals remains important for economic growth and cooperation.

To an otherwise extensive literature with yet mixed findings on the long run Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) theory, this paper extends the evidence against the PPP hypothesis in three East Asian economies namely Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand based on quarterly data spanning forty years (1968:Q1-2008:Q1). The testing of PPP hypothesis in this study employs two methods namely Engle-Granger procedure and Johansen multivariate cointegration method.

To an otherwise extensive literature with yet mixed findings on the long run Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) theory, this paper extends the evidence against the PPP hypothesis in three East Asian economies namely Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand based on quarterly data spanning forty years (1968:Q1-2008:Q1). The testing of PPP hypothesis in this study employs two methods namely Engle-Granger procedure and Johansen multivariate cointegration method.

Spatial econometric models are now an established tool for measuring spillover effects between geographical entities. Unfortunately, however, when entities share common borders but are subject to different institutional frameworks, unless this is taken into account the conclusions may be misleading. In fact, under these circumstances, where institutional arrangements play a role, we should expect to find spatial effects mainly in entities within the same institutional setting, while the effect across different institutional settings should be small or nil even where the entities share a common border. In this case, factoring in only geographical proximity will produce biased estimates, due to the combination of two distinct effects. To avoid these problems, we derive a methodology that partitions the standard contiguity matrix into within-contiguity and between-contiguity matrices, allowing separate estimation of these spatial correlation coefficients and simple tests for the existence of institutional constraints. We then apply this methodology to Italian Local Health Authority expenditures, using spatial panel techniques. We find a high and significant spatial coefficient only for the within-contiguity effect, confirming the validity of our approach.

This study presents a series of careful investigations in both input and output data problems in Chinese official statistics, especially those often ignored or mishandled in the existing studies, including an enormous structural break in employment statistics, an implausibly high post-reform labor productivity growth in the so-called "nonmaterial services", serious inconsistencies in output measures between industrial statistics and national accounts and between volume movements and changes in real values, as well as conceptual problems and flaws in the official measures of fixed asset investment and investment prices. Alternative adjustments for these problems are the basis for the construction of a new set of data for the aggregate economy and its five major sectors in 1949-2012. I find that the impact of external shocks is more pronounced using my alternative GDP estimates than with official estimates. Under the most reasonable scenarios, my results show that China's annul TFP growth is -0.5 and 1.1 percent per annum for the planning and reform period, respectively, much slower than 0.1 and 3.2 percent if using unadjusted official data. However, China's post-reform best TFP growth is found for 2001-07 at 4.1 percent per annum and poorest TFP performance is found for 2008-12 at -0.8 percent per annum. On average, and for most of the sub-periods examined, the results are very sensitive to how GDP estimates are adjusted, followed by what investment deflator is used. But it is less sensitive to how employment data are adjusted and what depreciation rate is adopted.

Economic globalization has promoted the world market to an everexpanding one. It has also achieved regional unity. In this case, the frequent trade between China and Australia has been intensified with increasing frequency. Therefore, the Sino-Australia intra-industry trade has started to develop. In this paper, we measure the index of IIT, HIIT and VIIT of Sino-Australia intra-industry trade and argue that the condition of Sino-Australia intra-industry trade remains low while the condition of intra-industry trade of finished goods is higher than that of primary commodity. Based on the analysis, we then develop a model to capture the main determinants of HIIT and VIIT in every industry. Policy suggestions are put forward accordingly to promote further development on Sino-Australia intra-industry trade.

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The aim of the study is to analyze the technical efficiency, TFP growth and sources of growth of Indonesian food manufacturing industry. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) were used for estimating 55 industries of the 2000-2006 periods. The results show that the annual average technical efficiency score was 0.74. The average the productivity growth was 1.25 percent per annum. Technical change is more closely related with productivity growth rather than the technical efficiency change. The average of technical change was 6.65 percent per annum. While technical efficiency change reveals has negative change by 1.78 percent per annum, Based on this, implies that technological progress is a major sources of growth rather than technical efficiency change. The rate of technological progress is higher than the rate of technical efficiency change by 6.65 percent per annum. This means that the Indonesian food processing industry has moderate level of technical efficiency and TFP growth. shown declined from 25.57 percent in 2001 to 9.24 percent in 2006 with annual average 11.93 percent per year. Estimating efficiency and total productivity growth can be done through several approaches, such as neo-classical approach and decomposing approach. In the neoclassical approach, productivity growth, know as TFP growth, reflects all the effect of output growth that cannot be ascribed to the inputs in production, whereas in decomposition approach, TFP growth is broken down into technological progress, scale component and the technical efficiency changes. Empirical studies on efficiency and total factor productivity growth for Asian countries have been investigated by many authors. Pitt and Lee (1981) used pooled data on fifty Indonesian weaving industries for the years 1972, 1973 and 1975. Based on time variant and time invariant stochastic frontier analyses their estimates of average efficiency for Indonesian weaving industries ranged between 60 percent and 70 percent. In the garment industry, Hill and Kalirajan (1993) noted that the average efficiency of small firms was 62.6 percent and only 7 firms were more than 85 percent efficient and 542 firms were less than 50 percent efficient. In the medium and large garment firms, Battese, Rao and Walujadi ( ) reported technical efficiency to be around 66percent during 1990 to 1995 for all regions. However, they also reported that the lowest technical efficiency was 48.5 percent for Jakarta and the highest was 83.7 percent for East Java. Beside efficiency, productivity is another issue that has been widely discussed in Asian countries. At firm"s level, such studies include who estimated TFP growth of Korean manufacturing industries by using decomposition method. Oguchi, Amdzah, Zainon, Abidin, and Shafii (2002) who studied TFP growth using growth accounting method for Malaysian manufacturing industries. Using the same method, Koh, Rahman and Tan (2002) estimated TFP growth for Singaporean manufacturing industries, whereas used TFP decomposition method to investigate productivity growth for most service sectors in the same country. Timmer (1999) Using growth accounting method utilized panel data of Indonesian manufacturing industries over the period 1975-1995 and concluded that annual TFP growth during this period was 2.8 percent. Between 1975 and 1981 TFP growth was 1.0 percent, four years later it decreased to 0.1 percent, but for the next four years TFP growth increased dramatically to 7.9 percent. However, during the first half of 1990s the TFP growth declined again, i.e. 2.1 percent per annum. Overall, his results showed that TFP growth accounted for only 22 percent of the output growth. Although TFP growth is quite high as compared to Korea and Taiwan, it is still considerably low. Using the same method, Aswicahyono and Hill (2002) also studied TFP growth of Indonesian manufacturing industries.

Since the global turn, research about strong asymmetrical dependencies across time and space (among which, but not limited to slavery, bondage, labor and coercion) has greatly expanded both conceptually and geographically. Asia, however defined, is certainly not the blind spot it once was in labor and slavery studies anymore. Yet, despite the pluralization recently generated by global labor and global slavery studies, Asia still remains marginal in many respects.

Organized by the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (Germany), this conference was dedicated to filling these gaps by shining a pluridisciplinary and emic light 1) on the variegated histories of dependency, slavery, bondage, coerced labor and forced displacement across Asia, and 2) on their historiographies, their legacies, their memories, and their current forms.

When Georgia's foreign trade structure is examined, it is seen that it is an important trade partner of Turkey and the European Union. Although Georgia wants to increase its foreign trade with liberalization policies, it has a foreign trade deficit because of production diversity and insufficient volume. As the financing of the foreign trade deficit with foreign capital and debt is not sustainable in the long term, measuring the level of intra-industry trade and the factors that determine trade of Georgia with its trade partners become important. In this context, the main purpose of the study is to measure Georgia's intra-industry trade with selected European countries and Turkey and to determine its determinants. The study period covers for the year 2008-2022. The Grubel-Lloyd index, that is frequently preferred in the literature, was used to measure Georgia's intra-industry trade with its trade partners, and the system generalized moments (GMM) method, that is a panel data estimation method, was used to estimate the determinants of intra-industry trade. When Georgia's average intra-industry trade index for the year 2008-2022 is examined; it is revealed that it has more intensive intra-industry trade with Germany, Italy, England, Netherlands, Greece and Turkey than other selected EU member countries. In addition, Georgia has very low intraindustry trade with Sweden, Austria, Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria. Furthermore, the system GMM estimation results show that the market size (GDP), per capita GDP indicating the level of development and foreign trade deficit between trading partners positively affects intra-industry trade, while the market size difference between countries, per capita GDP difference, trade imbalance and physical distance increase reduce intra-industry trade.

Over the past few decades, countries in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have achieved varying levels of economic development. In this paper, the nature and extent of productivity changes in Cobb-Douglas production function components and the growth of the knowledge economy of selected ASEAN countries, namely, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore plus South Korea are analyzed over the period 2005 to 2010. Utilising non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist total factor productivity (TFP) index, individual country's efficiency and productivity changes which took place within this period are estimated. Although there are vast numbers of studies conducted on firmlevel and industry-level efficiencies, there is scant literature on inter-country productivity comparisons using the Malmquist productivity index (MPI). The Malmquist TFP index, calculated within the framework of DEA, is broken down into three constituent elements accounting for different sources of productivity growth, namely technological progress, efficiency change, and the effects of economies of scale. Our results indicate that the Philippines and Singapore reported the highest increase in TFP within the referred years, and this growth in productivity is derived from both technical efficiency gains and technological progress. On the other hand, for the knowledge economy model, there is a remarkable growth in TFP for Thailand and Philippines. A comparison with better performing countries helps to identify policies for further improvement in ASEAN member countries.

Using nonlinear unit root tests developed by Kapetanios et al.(2003), we find strong evidence that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Wholesale Price Index (WPI) based Malaysian Ringgit–US Dollar (MYR/USD) real exchange rates are nonlinear ...

The finding of exchange rate-relative price nonlinear cointegration relationship in Malaysia, among others, suggests that nonlinear Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) equilibrium may be regarded as reference point in judging the short run misalignment of the Ringgit currency and thereby deducing effective policy actions. Moreover, economists who wish to extend the simple PPP exchange rate model into the more complicated monetary exchange models may do so comfortably, at least in the text of Malaysia. Nonetheless, such attempt should be tailored in a nonlinear way to suit the nonlinear characteristic of exchange rate behaviour The Fundamental Research Fund (Project no. A-002-16-ER/U078) provided by Universiti Malaysia Sabah is gratefully acknowledged.

the present paper examines inequality and determinants of earnings. During the period 1984-1997, Malaysia's real per capita GDP increased by approximately 70 percent, the participation rates for both men and women went up among all age groups, and the average number of years of schooling increased by 1.2 years. There was a significant relative wage improvement among the bottom deciles. The rate of return to an additional year of schooling remained high (at 10 percent), despite the huge increase in the supply of the highly educated. The stable overall rate, however, masks an increased rate of return on women's education, and a decreased rate for men. Wage discrimination against women amounts to 16-20 percent, and the bias has increased in 1997. The pro-Chinese earning ethnic bias is estimated at 31 percent.

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the ASEAN regional trade agreement by comparing the growth rates of intra-ASEAN trade with those of the rest of the world as well as with major trading countries, China, the USA, the EU, and India. The objective of this research is threefold: To identify existing trade trends, to determine the underlying explanations for these trends, and finally, to compare intra-ASEAN trade trends with the inter-ASEAN countries' trade trends. This paper takes a descriptive approach and dynamic panel GMM methods spanning the years

This article introduces the special issue 'From Crisis to Connectivity' by situating its contributions within a broader historical analysis of East and Southeast Asia's regional integration. It argues that contemporary frameworks such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (rcep) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (cptpp) represent the cumulative outcome of decades of institutional learning triggered by successive crises-from the 1997-1998 Asian Financial Crisis to the covid-19 pandemic. Through a synthesis of dependency theory, developmental regionalism, and historical institutionalism, the article interprets Asian regionalism as a cyclical and adaptive process shaped by the tension between external dependence and the pursuit of autonomy. The six papers in the special issue illuminate distinct dimensions of this historical evolution: the trajectory of monetary cooperation, the restructuring of global value chains, the rise of competitive megaregionalism, and the geopolitical reconfiguration of Asia's economic order. Together they demonstrate that Asia's integration is not a linear march toward supranationalism but a historically contingent project of resilience and pragmatic adaptation within a shifting global order.

This paper examines and compares the financial performance efficiency of the two major industries in India i.e.; cement and steel industries using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI). A panel dataset of 30 companies, comprising 15 firms from each sector over a tenyear period, was analysed to assess the efficient use of resources and productivity trends. Total assets, total equity, and operating expenses were taken as inputs, while return on assets (ROA) and net profit margin (NPM) were considered as outputs. An output-oriented DEA model under variable returns to scale (VRS) was applied to measure efficiency of the industry, and MPI was used to evaluate changes in productivity and technological progress over time. The findings indicate that both sectors operate at relatively high efficiency levels, but the steel industry demonstrates higher resource utilization and slightly stronger productivity gains, whereas the cement sector shows greater consistency but relatively smaller improvements. Malmquist index results show positive total factor productivity (TFP) growth in both sectors, with steel demonstrating slightly higher technological change, suggesting greater adaptability and innovation. The findings provide valuable insights for managers and investors on resource allocation and cost control and offer policymakers guidance on strengthening competitiveness in these capital-intensive sectors. The study also demonstrates the applicability of DEA and MPI as effective tools for multi-dimensional financial performance evaluation.

The present study aims to understand whether and
how social media use negatively affected Asian
Americans’ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We build on previous research on media framing,
stigma, and stereotyping to understand whether
social media messages about Asians as culprits to
blame for the pandemic, direct experiences of racism,
or media coverage of victims of anti-Asian hate crimes
led to mental health outcomes for this racial group.
We use an online survey of Asian American participants
(N = 527) conducted in 2020 to test the role of
(a) mediated ethnic blame (MEB), (b) direct stigma,
and (c) indirect stigma in explaining the relationship
between social media use and mental health among
Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our
results demonstrate that mediated ethnic blame, but
not direct or indirect stigma experiences, is associated
with Asian Americans’ mental health. Implications for
media framing, health communication, and journalism
are discussed.

This study makes a modest contribution to the debates by empirically analyzing the relationship between inflation and economic growth, using time series data from 1970 to 2013, obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria Annual Report and Statement of Account and West African Institute for Finance and Economic Management. It employs the Engle-Granger two step modeling (EGM) procedure to co-integration based on unrestricted Error Correction Model and Pair wise Granger Causality tests. The result obtained reveal good degree of correlation between dependent and the independent variables. This is captured by the explanatory power of the models result of R-squared (R 2) value of 0.69 and adjusted Rsquared (R 2) value of 0.65. From the analysis, our findings indicate that inflation and economic growth are positively related and that increase in inflation rate does not reduce economic growth which implies that, the rising cost of goods and services is not as a result of increase in real gross domestic product rather, it is as a result of rising cost of production more especially, the cost of energy and they both have short and long-run relationships. The granger causality test reveals uni-directional Causality running from inflation to economic growth at both lag 2, 3 and 4. The speed of adjustment to equilibrium is 58% within a year when the variables wander away from their equilibrium values. Based on the result of granger causality, the paper concludes that a very weak causality exist between the two variables used in this study. Therefore, the policy implication of these findings is that any increase in inflation rate would not have a negative repercussion on economic growth in Nigeria and recommends that government should come up with transparent policies that will improve the power sector.

China became a member of World Trade Organization (WTO), in the Jiangxi province of China, FDI has increased abruptly, while the region's economy has realized quick growth. The theories suggest that FDI may have a positive impact on economic growth. Although the prediction of FDI theories is supported by many existing literatures in China, those literatures mainly analyze the whole nation, or its large regions. Few focus on the analysis of a single province, especially those in the central region s of China, such as Jiangxi. This paper analyzes the impact of FDI in the Jiangxi province of China between 2001 and 2008 through the regional approach. This research question would be twofold, as following: 1) Did FDIs have a positive impact on economic growth in Jiangxi? If so, if this was due to the unbalance of regional development, which regions were they in? Was this due to an unbalance of development in other areas? And, if so, what were these areas? 2) For different regions, which factors would give effect on the FDI? This study uses a panel set data of 91 regions, plus 8 years. All this data is from the Jiangxi Statistical Books 2002-2009. The result shows that the impact of FDI existed between 2001 and 2008, and FDI could be largely explained by only the labor input. However, due to the unbalance of development among regions, the impact of FDI is stronger in the regions near the coast province while the impact of other investment is opposite. Form regions, FDI could be explained by only 1 -2 factors, and those factors are different in 4 regions. Such as, the FDI could be explained by only the growth rate of RDP per captia of the previous year in the North East region, but only by the labor input in the South East region.

This paper studies the degree of educational poverty in OECD countries on the basis of last edition (2015) of OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The definition of ‘poor in education’, in terms of PISA data, refers to the students below the baseline level of proficiency that is required to participate fully in society. We adopt both one-dimensional and multidimensional approach to measure poverty in education. The educational poverty is analysed by the poverty metrics developed by Foster, Greer and Thorbecke and those proposed by Alkire and Foster. The main results of our analysis provide a detailed picture of the degree of poverty relative to student learning in OECD countries, and they can be considered an analytical tool to improve the quality of educational systems.

This paper presents an empirical investigation of the spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) using a firm-level panel data from Thailand between 2001 and 2004. We examine export spillovers, both intra-and inter-industry. The evidence shows that FDI inflows into Thailand generate some positive externalities to domestic firms. Foreign firms generate positive export spillovers to their domestic customers on the decision to participate in export markets. Once domestic firms enter export markets, the competitive effect generated by foreign firms in the same industry forces them to improve their export intensity. Although our findings confirm that overall FDI generates benefits to domestic firms, different incentives to FDI generate different spillovers to different types of domestic firms. These results may be used as guidance for policymakers to attract certain types of FDI inflows. One implication is that government may wish to encourage export-oriented FDI as it generates positive export spillovers to domestic firms whilst protecting domestic firms in some industries that are affected by the negative export spillovers from domestic market-oriented FDI.

General equilibrium models are constructed of four Western Pacific economies which differ according to their levels of development and the comparative sizes of their manufacturing sectors. The countries chosen are Australia, an industrialised importer of manufactures, Japan, an industrialised exporter, the Philippines, a developing importer, and the Republic of Korea, a developing exporter. In each case the manufacturing sector is characterised as comprising nine separate industries, each with identical oligopolistic firms producing homogeneous goods which are differentiated from competing imports. Trade reforms are found to yield conventional results in that net economic gains are small while implicit transfers are substantial. More competitive (non-collusive) pricing by oligopolistic firms, which might be achieved through reform of competition law and trade practices surveillance, yield larger net gains and these gains tend to accrue to all domestic primary factors. Imperfect competition and differences in economic structure are found to interact most strongly when reforms include changes to competition policy and hence to the pricing behaviour of oligopoly firms.

We study the factors behind the public sector premium in Albania and Sri Lanka, the group heterogeneity in the premium, the sources of public sector wage compression, and the impact of this compression on the way individuals self-select between the public and the private sector. Similar to other countries, the public sectors in Albania and Sri Lanka pay higher wages than the private sector, for all but the most valued employees. While half of the premium of Sri Lanka and two-thirds of it in Albania are explained by differences in the occupation-educationexperience mix between the sectors, and the level of private sector informality, the unexplained part of the premium is significant enough to affect the preferences of working in the public sector for different groups. We show that the compressed distributions of public sector wages and benefits create incentives for positive sorting into the public sector among most employees, and negative sorting among the most productive ones.

The nexus between foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth has been the main focus of extensive academic research over the past few decades. This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the effects of FDI on growth to identify the mechanism via which FDI affect growth, and to explain the reasons that account for ambiguity of empirical findings. This assessment was conducted through a review of available documentation. The study reveals that FDI promotes the recipient country’s economic growth via various mechanisms: raises capital formation of the host country, increases growth by the transfer of new technologies and knowhow (new production processes and techniques, managerial skills, and varieties of capital goods) and increases competition in the host country. However, the majority of empirical investigations reveal that recipient countries need to pass a certain level of absorptive capacity (degree of financial development, human capital development, techn...

the present paper examines inequality and determinants of earnings. During the period 1984-1997, Malaysia's real per capita GDP increased by approximately 70 percent, the participation rates for both men and women went up among all age groups, and the average number of years of schooling increased by 1.2 years. There was a significant relative wage improvement among the bottom deciles. The rate of return to an additional year of schooling remained high (at 10 percent), despite the huge increase in the supply of the highly educated. The stable overall rate, however, masks an increased rate of return on women's education, and a decreased rate for men. Wage discrimination against women amounts to 16-20 percent, and the bias has increased in 1997. The pro-Chinese earning ethnic bias is estimated at 31 percent.

In a recent paper, Giugale and Korobow (2000) present evidence that suggests that the time required by output to return to trend following a financial shock is faster under a flexible exchange rate regime than under a fixed exchange rate. In this paper, we use vector autoregression models to measure the persistence properties of output for a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Our results suggest that output persistence is not uniquely related to a country's choice of exchange rate regime. The two countries in our sample with the least persistent output following a financial shock are Australia, where the exchange rate is fully flexible, and Hong Kong, where it is rigidly fixed via a currency board.

The short-run effect of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis upon tourism and the economy of Singapore and tourism in particular has been well observed, but the magnitude of long-rung effect is still not clear. This study employs recent Singaporean tourism survey data, the updated Singaporean input-output tables, and a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to gauge the long-run effects of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and selected policy responses. The simulation results suggest that the global financial crisis has had mild negative long-run effects on the overall development of Singapore's economy, and that the GST deduction policy ought to offset this negative effect.

We use the MONASH-VN model, a dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the Vietnamese economy, to investigate Vietnam's rapid growth and structural change over the period 1996 to 2003. We do this in two steps. First, we estimate changes in variables representing production technologies, consumer preferences, government policy and other structural features of the economy. Movements in these structural and policy variables are then used to explain the recent history of Vietnam's rapid growth and structural change. We find the most important sources of growth and change to be technical improvements, favorable shifts in foreign demand for Vietnamese goods and employment growth. Other important factors include movement in household preferences away from primary products and towards manufactures and services, expansion in agricultural land supply, and tax reform.

This paper is devoted to identifying and assessing the factors that have the most significant impact on the outbound and inbound tourist flows of countries. Hypotheses are put forward and tested about the sensitivity of outbound flows to changes in certain macroeconomic factors of countries, as well as the significant impact of events occurring at the state or regional level on the inbound flows. Regression-correlation analysis of time series allowed to obtain quantitative estimates of the degree of macroeconomic factors influence to the outbound flows of the number of countries and to identify the most influencing factors. The dynamics of inbound flows was analyzed in terms of jumps in the increase or decrease of the flow as a reaction to certain activities of a negative or positive nature. Relevant for modern tourism collapse due to COVID-19 pandemy impact trends in the rate of recovery of tourist flow are estimated. © 2021

This paper investigates the costs and benefits of portfolio investment versus foreign direct investment (FDI) in a comparative study between China and the US. Recently, China‟s authorities have announced a plan to make the Reminbi fully convertible in the near future. This relaxation of the capital controls surely will benefit foreign firms, who are doing business with China and who want to transfer money easily from Chinese bank to a foreign bank. However, this raises the questions of whether or not the full convertibility benefits China. This paper shows empirical evidence that the US benefits much more from portfolio investment, which often rises sharply with full convertibility, than China does. In contrast China benefits much more from FDI, which can flourish without full convertibility, than the US does. The paper concludes that China might want to phase out its full capital convertibility slowly over time instead of implementing the process abruptly in the near future. Keywor...

The previous literature identifies the high and persistent income inequality of Chile, but the geography of this inequality is still unexplored. To evaluate this dimension, we propose a three-stage decomposition of the Theil index at regional, province and county level. Our decomposition indicates that between 1992 and 2009, 21% of the inequality is attributable to these spatial scales. Inside of them, the highest inequality exists between counties and between regions, although they follow different patterns. The inequality between-counties fell from 65% to 53%. Oppositely, inequality between regions was 21% in 1992, and grew to 35% in 2009.

In 2009, for the first time, Puerto Rico's unconditional median earnings gender gap presented a statistically significant negative sign. We document the elements that lead to an overall improvement in women's economic position and find that the unconditional earnings gap turns positive once observable characteristics are considered. For instance, we find that the negative gender gap disappears when we adjust for educational attainments as a new indicator of gender gaps. In general, relative differences in returns on education and a glass ceiling effect moderated by dependent children are two of the explanatory factors allowing for the continuation of gender disparities within groups. There is also a direct association between women's representation in a given occupation/education group and the gender earnings gap.