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The term 'Middle-Income Trap' refers to countries which stagnate
economically after reaching a certain level of per capita income on
the basis of labour- and capital-intensive growth, and are
struggling to transition towards more skill-intensive and
technology-driven development. It has resonance for the increasing
number of countries in Asia who have either languished in
middle-income status for extended periods of time, or are worried
about growth slow-downs. This book sets outs the conceptual
underpinnings of the Middle-Income Trap and explores the various
ways it can be defined. It also focuses on the debate surrounding
the Middle-Income Trap which questions the appropriate
institutional and policy settings for middle-income countries to
enable them to continue past the easy phase of economic growth. The
book engages with this debate by investigating the role of
institutions, human capital, and trade policy in helping countries
increase their income levels and by highlighting factors which
enable the shift to higher and qualitatively better growth. It
questions how the large emerging economies in Asia such as China,
Indonesia, and India are currently grappling with the challenges of
transitioning from labour-intensive to technology- and
knowledge-intensive production, and discusses what can be learnt
from the countries that have been able to escape the trap to attain
high-income status. Providing a conceptual framework for the
Middle-Income Trap, this book will be of interest to students and
scholars of Asian Economics, Comparative Economics and Asian
Studies.
The term 'Middle-Income Trap' refers to countries which stagnate
economically after reaching a certain level of per capita income on
the basis of labour- and capital-intensive growth, and are
struggling to transition towards more skill-intensive and
technology-driven development. It has resonance for the increasing
number of countries in Asia who have either languished in
middle-income status for extended periods of time, or are worried
about growth slow-downs. This book sets outs the conceptual
underpinnings of the Middle-Income Trap and explores the various
ways it can be defined. It also focuses on the debate surrounding
the Middle-Income Trap which questions the appropriate
institutional and policy settings for middle-income countries to
enable them to continue past the easy phase of economic growth. The
book engages with this debate by investigating the role of
institutions, human capital, and trade policy in helping countries
increase their income levels and by highlighting factors which
enable the shift to higher and qualitatively better growth. It
questions how the large emerging economies in Asia such as China,
Indonesia, and India are currently grappling with the challenges of
transitioning from labour-intensive to technology- and
knowledge-intensive production, and discusses what can be learnt
from the countries that have been able to escape the trap to attain
high-income status. Providing a conceptual framework for the
Middle-Income Trap, this book will be of interest to students and
scholars of Asian Economics, Comparative Economics and Asian
Studies.
The year 2015 has special significance for regional economic
integration. The ASEAN Community, integrating the political,
economic and social aspects of regional cooperation, will complete
its first milestone by December 2015. Expectations of tangible
benefits under an ASEAN Economic Community have attracted much
attention though many of the initiatives will be realized
post-2015. Following the policy of open regionalism, ASEAN has also
signed free trade agreements with Australia, New Zealand, China,
India, Japan and South Korea. It has launched negotiations for the
Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement in
2013, with expected breakthrough by end-2015. The Southeast Asian
economies are also involved in two other regional initiatives.
First is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), initiated by the
United States. As part of the U.S. ""pivot to Asia"", the TPP is
envisioned as a ""comprehensive and high-quality"" agreement and
has concluded its negotiation in October 2015. Second, the
discussions on regional connectivity have broadened; China has
emerged as a recent lead proponent with its proposals for ""One
Belt, One Road"" and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. All
these together have implications not only for individual Southeast
Asian countries but also for regional trading architecture. To aid
in understanding the beginnings, development, and potential of
these grand plans, this collection of 22 essays offers a rich
analysis of ASEAN's own economic integration and other related
initiatives proliferating in the broader Asia-Pacific region
The services sector plays an important role in ASEAN economies as
it accounts for about half of the region's GDP and more than 45 per
cent of its total employment. ASEAN aspires to deepen integration
in the services sector in order to enhance the sector's
contribution to economic development and growth in each country.
Despite this, services liberalization has progressed slowly
compared to goods liberalization both at the multilateral and the
regional levels. Different regulatory mechanisms across countries
have contributed to the slow pace of liberalization. Logistics is
an important industry in the services sector. The integration of
logistics is important for deepening economic integration in ASEAN
as it facilitates the movement of goods, services and people within
and across countries, among producers and from producers to
consumers. In view of its importance, ASEAN has identified
logistics as one of its priority integration sectors. It has also
developed a Connectivity Master Plan and a Strategic Transport
Plan, where logistics plays an important role. This book examines
the current state of services liberalization in the ten ASEAN
economies. It also assesses the FDI enabling environment and the
extent of FDI liberalization in the logistics sector as well as the
liberalization challenges encountered in each of the ASEAN
economies. The book, thus, provides a comparative picture of
services liberalization as well as the state of logistics
liberalization and development in each of the ten ASEAN member
countries. All these have important bearings on deepening ASEAN
economic integration for 2025 and beyond.
Since 1957, Malaysia's economic development has been an account of
growth, transformation, and of structural change. More than 75 per
cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) comes from the
manufacturing and services sectors. However, Malaysia is stuck in a
middle-income trap and is facing challenges on the economic and
political front. In June 2010, Prime Minister Najib Razak unveiled
the 10th Malaysian Plan (2011-15) to chart the development of
Malaysia from a middle- to high-income nation. This publication
represents a policy-oriented stocktake and evaluation by academics,
policy-makers, and business people on Malaysia's achievements,
present work-in-progress endeavours, and some of the future
challenges facing the nation in its pursuit to achieve a developed
high-income country status.
"This is an important and timely volume: important because ASEAN is
an increasingly significant and influential regional and global
actor; and timely because, as the 2015 ASEAN Economic Community
target approaches, what is needed is a sympathetic yet arms-length
survey of the issues and challenges. ASEAN will miss some of the
targets laid out in its AEC Blueprint, but the reader is left in no
doubt that the ASEAN spirit is alive and well. The editors include
a distinguished former Secretary General of ASEAN and the leading
academic analyst of ASEAN economic cooperation. They and their
co-editors are to be congratulated for soliciting contributions
from an outstanding and diverse group of authors, and then adding
their highly authoritative commentary and analysis. A must read for
anybody seriously interested in ASEAN." - Hall Hill, H.W. Arndt
Professor of Southeast Asian Economies, Australian National
University
ASEAN has a goal to create an economic community by 2015. To
achieve the goal, connectivity among the member states needs to be
given due importance. In 2010, ASEAN adopted the Master Plan on
ASEAN Connectivity (MPAC), which looked at physical, institutional
and people-to-people connectivity. It pinned down fifteen priority
projects which can potentially transform the ASEAN region,
providing the conditions for a single market and production base.
But MPAC is an expensive initiative, and funding remains a major
challenge. The private sector needs to be actively involved as a
number of infrastructure projects identified in the MPAC are
lacking substantial investment. This book looks at the current
state of ASEAN's physical connectivity and challenges in building
better infrastructure. It contains a collection of papers that
discuss specific issues pertaining to each kind of physical
connectivity - transportation infrastructure, telecom connectivity,
ICT and energy infrastructure. The book concludes with the steps
needed to be taken for implementation of the various plans, and
policy recommendations.
The ten Southeast Asian economies reached a milestone on 31
December 2015, when they announced the formation of an ASEAN
Community. Although this includes three pillars - ASEAN
Political-Security Community, ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and
the ASEAN Socio?Cultural Community - it is the economic pillar that
generates immense debate, due to its expected quantifiable benefits
to member countries. This book, thus, focuses on the ASEAN Economic
Community and seeks to explain the need for building domestic
consensus within the member countries. It starts with an overview
chapter describing the current achievements of the AEC. It then
explores possible explanations for the
achievements/non-achievements and offers a hypothesis on
conflicting economic interests in a country as one possible
explanation for gaps in implementation. This is because any form of
economic liberalisation brings with it the winners and losers,
thereby raising resistance to liberalization measures and slowing
down the implementation process. The book includes six country
chapters - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand and Vietnam ? that examine sources of domestic conflict/s
in greater detail and depth. It also includes a regional chapter,
co?authored by the ex-Secretary General of ASEAN, Mr Rodolfo
Severino, that brings out the political nature of ASEAN economic
cooperation since its inception in 1976. For ASEAN beyond 2015, the
book articulates the need to obtain a strong domestic consensus
that supports the integration initiatives of the AEC. This can be
viewed as a way forward to accelerate and deepen integration within
ASEAN. The book concludes with some suggestions on how each country
can move towards achieving domestic consensus, based on the
respective country level analysis.
During the 13th ASEAN Summit in November 2007, ASEAN Leaders
endorsed the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint, which laid
the foundation of creating a ""single market and production base""
among the ten Southeast Asian economies. Soon after that, ASEAN
faced great uncertainties in the light of the 2008 global financial
crisis and continues to remain cautious in the face of the ongoing
global economic weakness. Despite this, the region is forging ahead
with its commitment to carry out economic liberalisation and
cooperation as stipulated in the AEC Blueprint. The official AEC
scorecard, published in March 2012, stated that ASEAN had achieved
68.2 per cent of its targets for the 2008-11 period. The official
AEC scorecard is expected to track the implementation of measures
and the achievement of milestones committed in the AEC Strategic
Schedule. However, the scorecard, in its current form, is too brief
and general to be useful for the ASEAN citizens. This book attempts
to fill this gap and evaluates the current status of and the
progress towards the milestones of the AEC Blueprint. The overall
message of the book is that even though ASEAN may miss some of its
integration goals by 31 December 2015, it will certainly deliver
some of the key initiatives - tariff elimination, establishing the
ASEAN Single Window, laying the foundation of the regional
investment initiative, advancing tourism services, moving ahead
with ASEAN connectivity and the realisation of ASEAN 1 free trade
agreements. AEC's goal of forming an equitable and competitive
regional economy will continue to be a work in progress. AEC 2015
is going to be a historic milestone that will raise ASEAN's profile
and will help the region to maintain its centrality in the
international community.
ASEAN leaders proclaimed to create an ASEAN Economic Community by
2015. But achieving the target requires cooperation and
coordination both within and among the ten ASEAN economies.
Currently, with countries having varying considerations towards
complete liberalization, protectionism still persists in certain
sectors of the economies. A lot of work needs to be done in
addressing the domestic reforms, the gaps in infrastructure, the
lack of human resources and adequate institutions. Moreover, it is
the businesses whose decisions and actions will help the region to
achieve an effective integration. The policymakers have vital roles
to play in raising the engagement of the private businesses in
ASEAN matters. As time is limited, one way for ASEAN is to focus on
"core" elements of integration and implement them earnestly in the
shortest possible time. The rest of the process, as envisaged in
the AEC Blueprint, can follow beyond 2015. This book examines the
state of readiness of the member countries for regional integration
and discusses the challenges to ASEAN businesses. It gives policy
recommendations to address some of the issues faced by the key
stakeholders.
Asia has witnessed a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs)
since the turn of the millennium. The first regional agreement -
the ASEAN FTA - was transformed into the ASEAN Economic Community
at the end of 2015. In the meantime, ASEAN forged five ASEAN 1 FTAs
and began to negotiate a sixteen-member Regional Comprehensive
Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement. In parallel, the U.S.-led
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supporting U.S. foreign policy of
""Pivot to Asia"", was broadly agreed in October 2015. The RCEP and
the TPP are accompanied by other mega-regional integration
processes developing elsewhere in the world, including the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership for the European
Union and the United States, and the Pacific Alliance among four
Latin American member states. Meanwhile, APEC is also striving to
meet its Bogor Goal targets and create a Free Trade Area of the
Asia-Pacific. Each of these mega-regionals aims to achieve greater
trade and investment liberalization and facilitation and more
harmonized trade and investment rules so that all member economies
can participate in the global value chain of production. Instead of
undermining, these regional exercises can be building blocks for a
more liberal global trading system supported by the World Trade
Organization.This book ruminates on these regional agreements,
their economic and strategic rationales and challenges during
negotiations and afterwards. The book brings together eminent
scholars and experts to deepen our understanding of the complex
nature of the mega-regional trade agreements and their
implications. It is useful both for the academic and research
community and for policymakers who focus on trade and economic
cooperation issues.
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