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722. What Went Right in Japan
- Author:
- Adam S. Posen
- Publication Date:
- 09-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- Japan's recovery is strong. Real GDP growth will exceed 4 percent this year and likely be 3 percent or higher in 2005 and perhaps even 2006. The Japanese economy has been growing solidly for the last five quarters (average real 3.2 percent annualized rate), and the pace is sustainable, given Japan's underlying potential growth rate (which has risen to 2 to 2.5 percent per year) and the combination of catch-up growth closing the current output gap and some reforms that will raise the growth rate for quarters to come (though not permanently). Indicators of domestic demand beyond capital investment are increasingly positive, including housing starts bottoming out, inventories drawing down, and diminished deflation. Moreover, on the external side, while China was the main source of export growth in 2003, the composition of exports has become more balanced this year and is widening beyond that seen in other recoveries. Just as in the United States and other developed economies, a sharp slowdown in Chinese growth and a sustained further increase in energy prices represent the primary risks to the outlook.
- Topic:
- Development and Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Japan, China, Israel, East Asia, and Asia
723. Adjusting China's Exchange Rate Policies
- Author:
- Morris Goldstein
- Publication Date:
- 06-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- During the past year, there has been considerable debate about, and much international criticism of, China's exchange rate and its currency regime. Yes, criticism of China in the United States would likely be more muted if the ongoing recovery were not so “jobless,” if employment in the US manufacturing sector had not (mainly for other reasons) declined so much in the three-year run-up to this presidential elect ion year, if so much attention were not focused on the very large bilateral US trade deficit with China instead of China's economically—more meaningful overall balance-of-payments position, and if the United States had not done such a poor job of improving its saving-investment imbalance—particularly in the public sector.
- Topic:
- Economics and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States, China, and Asia
724. CERI: Regional integration in Asia since China's entry into the WTO
- Author:
- Diana Hochraich
- Publication Date:
- 07-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI)
- Abstract:
- Since their economic development got under way, the ASEAN countries - which essentially manufacture labour-intensive products - have been marked by strong regional integration brought about by the segmentation of the production process engaged in by Japanese companies. In these countries, successive relocations resulted in de facto economic integration at a time when various political groupings intent on blocking the development of communism were also emerging. Since joining the WTO, China - the world's workshop - has become the hub for trade with the developed countries. In the face of such competition, the ASEAN countries will have to show their capacity to maintain their position in the value chain represented by the production of all of the Asian countries.
- Topic:
- Economics and Regional Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
725. Firm Size, Technical Efficiency and Productivity Growth in Chinese Industry'
- Author:
- Dic Lo and Yuk-Shing Cheng
- Publication Date:
- 12-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
- Abstract:
- Since the mid-1990s, China's state leadership has adopted a policy of nurturing the competitiveness of large state-owned industrial enterprises. The implications of this policy have been a matter of debate in the literature. This paper seeks to provide some useful input into the debate. With a view of investigating into the potential of long-term development of large enterprises, we estimate the “sequential production technology” in computing the Malmquist productivity index for various size-groups of enterprises in Chinese industry. Our findings indicate that large enterprises did register the fastest productivity growth and improvement in technical efficiency in the 1994-97 period. It thus appears that large-scale, mainly state-owned Chinese enterprises have exhibited the potential of m a king noticeable improvements and the relevant state policy does have its justification.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, Economics, and International Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- China
726. China's Nexus of Foreign Trade and Economic Growth: Making Sense of the Anomaly
- Author:
- Dic Lo
- Publication Date:
- 08-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
- Abstract:
- Using a range of specifications that are standard in the relevant literature, this paper finds that China's rapid and sustained economic growth in the reform era has tended to be negatively correlated with its export growth and positively correlated with its import growth. This finding runs counter to widely -held perceptions on China's nexus of foreign trade and economic growth, and thus presents a serious challenge for interpretation. On the basis of some further regression analyses, and drawing on a number of applied studies on the subject matter, the paper argues that the finding is plausible and of complex ramifications. The conclusion which this paper arrives at, therefore, is that the Chinese experience has tended to be a case of strategic integration into the world market, rather than conforming to the standard neoclassical thesis of trade regime neutrality.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, Economics, and International Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- China
727. Is China "Exporting Deflation"?
- Author:
- Steven B. Kamin, Mario Marazzi, and John W. Schindler
- Publication Date:
- 01-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- In the past few years, observers increasingly have pointed to China as a source of downward pressure on global prices. This paper evaluates the theoretical and empirical evidence bearing on the question of whether China's buoyant export growth has led to significant changes in the inflation performance of its trading partners. This evidence suggests that the impact of Chinese exports on global prices has been, while non-negligible, fairly modest. On a priori grounds, our theoretical analysis suggests that China's economy is still too small relative to the world economy to have much effect on global inflation: a back-of-the-envelope calculation puts that effect at about 1/3 percentage point in recent years. In terms of the empirical evidence, we identify a statistically significant effect of U.S. imports from China on U.S. import prices, but given the size of this effect and the relatively low share of imports in U.S. GDP, the ultimate impact on the U.S. consumer prices has likely been quite small. Moreover, imports from China had little apparent effect on U.S. producer prices. Finally, using a multi-country database of trade transactions, we estimate that since 1993, Chinese exports lowered annual import inflation in a large set of economies by 1/4 percentage point or less on average, similar to the prediction of our theoretical model.
- Topic:
- Economics and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
728. A New World Map in Textiles and Clothing
- Publication Date:
- 10-2004
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
- Abstract:
- The textile and clothing industries provide employment for tens of million of people, primarily in developing countries, and accounted for USD 350 billion in merchandise exports in 2002, or 5.6% of the world total. The current rules governing world trade in textiles and clothing will change drastically at the end of 2004, when countries will no longer be able to protect their own industries by means of quantitative restrictions on imports of textile and clothing products. What will this mean for cotton growers in Burkina Faso and Turkey, fashion retailers in France and the United States, or shirt factories in Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic or China?
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, Economics, and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- Bangladesh, United States, China, Turkey, and France
729. Does China Matter? The Global Economic Issues
- Author:
- Stuart Harris
- Publication Date:
- 09-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Australian National University Department of International Relations
- Abstract:
- In 1999, Gerry Segal, then Director of Research at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs entitled 'Does China matter?'. His article ranged across economic, political and strategic issues but his overall conclusion was that China's importance had been greatly exaggerated. As far as economic questions were concerned, Segal saw China as a small market 'that matters little to the world, especially outside Asia'.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Economics, and Globalization
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
730. 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