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Begin New Search Topic International Trade and Finance Content Type Working Paper Publishing Institution The Brookings Institution

21. China and Southeast Asia: The Difference of a Decade

Author:
Catharin Dalpino and Juo-yu Lin
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
Over a span of several years, China's relations with the nations of Southeast Asia have shifted in quiet increments. The accumulated effect, however, has been profound. A concerted diplomatic effort to woo countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which now includes all countries in the region excepting East Timor, has reaped multiple benefits for Beijing. It is beginning to alter the political balance in the region as alignments with extra-regional powers are shifting, however subtly. In some aspects, the change is more dramatic. Economic relations have expanded rapidly; for example, trade between China and Southeast Asia is seventeen times larger today than it was twenty-five years ago.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
China, Beijing, Asia, and Southeast Asia

22. Cross-Strait Relations: A Time for Careful Management

Author:
Richard Bush
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
On the face of it, relations between China and Taiwan have improved significantly since the saber-rattling of 1999 and 2000. Economic relations have never been better. Two-way trade is around $40 billion annually, and the Mainland has become Taiwan's largest export market, displacing the United States. Taiwan companies continue to invest in the PRC at record rates, in order to keep their products competitive through cheaper Chinese labor. The product mix of Taiwan factories on the mainland is shifting from items like shoes and toys to high-end goods like semi-conductors and notebook computers. As machinery moves, so do people, and the number of Taiwan people living most of the time in the PRC is hundreds of thousands. With this growing economic interaction come shared interests and better mutual understanding. Neither side would benefit from conflict, and both know it. The chance of growing tensions seems low.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Taiwan, and Asia

23. The Second Term of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa: The Dual Problems of Performance and Capacity

Author:
Wilson Wong
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
In the more than five years since Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty, it has suffered economical, social, and political decline. The root cause of this decline, and the key variable for the next five years, is institutional weakness. Specifically, the Hong Kong government must address the dual problems of poor performance and low capacity in order to reverse the decline and get Hong Kong back on track for economic growth and institutional development.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Asia

24. Japanese Economic Stagnation: Still in Neutral

Author:
Edward Lincoln
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
One of the discouraging problems in Northeast Asia over the past decade has been the lengthy malaise in the Japanese economy and the inability of government, business, and the public to forge effective solutions. In the decade since 1992, the average annual real (inflation-adjusted) economic growth rate has been only one percent—positive but very low and punctuated by four recessions in which gross domestic product (GDP) fell for at least two consecutive quarters. The financial sector is weighed down under an enormous amount of non-performing loans that has only grown larger over time. Meanwhile, Japan has become the first industrial country since the 1930s to experience deflation—a decline in the overall price level.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, and Northeast Asia

25. Chinese State, Chinese Society: Facing a New Century

Author:
Jae Ho Chung and Zhang Ye
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
The Sixteenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was convened during November 8-15, 2002. The Congress reconfirmed the Party's strong commitment to the three key tasks of achieving modernization, accomplishing national unification, and safeguarding world peace and development. The outgoing CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin, on behalf of the Fifteenth Central Committee, emphasized the need for further political changes at the grassroots and presented the target of quadrupling China's gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020. Jiang also projected that China's armed forces would possess fewer but better troops “ with Chinese characteristics. ”
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
China and Asia

26. Crisis on the Korean Peninsula

Author:
Richard Bush, Dean Nowowiejski, and Tomatsu Nakano
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
Most signs during the late summer and early fall of 2002 pointed to progress on the Korean peninsula. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had finally grasped, it appeared, the need for international moderation and domestic reform. The United States seemed ready to respond in kind. But with the visit to Pyongyang in October of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly – the first high-level contact since the Bush Administration came into office – the situation quickly unraveled. Instead of offering the “bold initiative” that was reportedly in the works, Kelly confronted his interlocutors with evidence that their government had mounted a new, clandestine uranium-based nuclear program. The North Koreans refused to disavow the program and insisted on their right to nuclear weapons. Kelly responded that the United States would not engage the DPRK unless and until it abandoned the program. The status of the 1994 U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework, which had capped North Korea's plutonium-based program in return for international assistance in meeting its civilian energy needs, was uncertain at best. The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the mechanism for providing that aid, stopped heavy fuel oil shipments to North Korea at the end of 2002 at American insistence.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Asia, Korea, and Sinai Peninsula

27. Brookings Northeast Asia Survey, 2002-03

Author:
Catharin Dalpino and Richard Bush
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
This is the third edition of the Northeast Asian Survey, sponsored by the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies of the Brookings Institution. Following this review of developments in the region during 2002, the bulk of the volume is composed of essays that provide mid-term perspectives on internal dynamics in China, Hong Kong, and Japan, on the crisis on the Korean peninsula, and on relations between China and Taiwan and on China and Southeast Asia. All the authors have been affiliated with the Brookings Institution during the 2002-03 year. Most were CNAPS Visiting Fellows or Brookings Federal Executive Fellows.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Northeast Asia

28. The Spatial Distribution of Entrepeneurial Support Networks: Evidence from Semiconductor Initial Public Offerings from 1996-2000

Author:
Martin Kenney and Donald Patton
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
Theory and recent research demonstrates that entrepreneurship is a spatially and socially embedded activity. In certain regions, dense support networks of institutions dedicated to assisting entrepreneurial start-ups have been established and a wide variety of authors have given credit to these networks for supporting regional entrepreneurship (Kenney and von Burg 1999; Saxenian 1994; Bahrami and Evans 2000). As Marshall (1890) recognized many, but not all, industries exhibit a strong clustering effect (see also, e.g., Storper and Walker 1988; Porter 1990; 1998). Research on these networks has been hampered by a lack of empirical data that contains spatial variables and identifies the relationship between various actors (i.e., venture capitalists, law firms and investment bankers) and the start-up firm. Thus research has been qualitative and anecdotal or when quantitative limited to certain industries usually biotechnology.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Non-Governmental Organization
Political Geography:
United States

29. Enron's Missed Opportunity: Enron's Refusal to Build a Collaborative Market Turned Bandwidth Trading Into a Disaster

Author:
Andrew Schwartz
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
Why did Enron fail? The easy answer is that Enron was a fraud, a Ponzi scheme designed to enrich scoundrels. But beneath the off-balance sheet transactions and partnerships that have drawn such intense scrutiny, Enron's efforts to reduce complex products into tradable commodities represented one of the most promising ideas of the past twenty-five years. Enron's failure was due in part to a business strategy that regarded competitors as ruthless and uncompromising. That mentality led the company to reject the very real possibility that rivals could, working together, create the new markets that in turn would open up profit opportunities for all. Enron's brilliant vision of the New Economy didn't go far enough; it required a New Economy business model that emphasized cooperation among competitors.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

30. Non-Cooperative Dynamics of Multi-Agent Teams

Author:
Robert L. Axtell
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
Results on the formation of multi-agent teams are reviewed and extended. Conditions are specified under which it is individually rational for agents to spontaneously form coalitions in order to engage in collective action. In a cooperative setting the formation of such groups is to be expected. Here we show that in non-cooperative environments—presumably a more realistic context for a variety of both human and software agents—self-organized coalitions are capable of extracting welfare improvements. The Nash equilibria of these coalitional formation games are demonstrated to always exist and be unique. Certain free rider problems in such group formation dynamics lead to the possibility of dynamically unstable Nash equilibria, depending on the nature of intra-group compensation and coalition size. Yet coherent groups can still form, if only temporarily, as demonstrated by computational experiments. Such groups of agents can be either long-lived or transient. The macroscopic structure of these emergent 'bands' of agents is stationary in sufficiently large populations, despite constant adaptation at the agent level. It is argued that assumptions concerning attainment of agent-level (Nash) equilibrium, so ubiquitous in conventional economics and game theory, are difficult to justify behaviorally and highly restrictive theoretically, and are thus unlikely to serve either as fertile design objectives or robust operating principles for realistic multi-agent systems.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Latin America