Suchergebnisse

The recent history of economic and social development has shown that while contemporary development models succeed in increasing the wealth and wellbeing of mankind around the world, they also suffer from a number of shortcomings: they emphasize too much on financial success (like GDP) at the expense of other important dimensions of development, they bring in occasional but more frequent crises of various sort, they entail numerous social, such as disparity, and environmental illnesses. In short, the current development models are not sustainable. While Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is an attempt to achieve sustainable development by setting up goals that would steer the development in right direction, it lacks description of how those goals should be achieved. Rather, SDGs recognize that countries may have their own ways to achieve the goals. In this paper, we argue that Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP), invented by the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, offers an alternative path to sustainable development. Key differences of SEP from other development models are that (a) it is a more holistic way of development, with physical and spiritual betterment simultaneously being sought, (b) it regards development as a multi-dimensional endeavor from the outset and, (c) it recognizes the role of communities and voluntary participation in development as important components on the path to sustainable development. We use a simple model that links SEP to sustainable development outcomes and test it with a newly-constructed system of indicators that captures SEP principles held by Thai people and a number of ultimate development outcomes. Our results find positive contributions of SEP to sustainable development outcomes. The indicators can thus be used to monitor both SEP and sustainable development. Keywords: Path to sustainable development, Development Indicators, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Sufficiency, economy philosophy

This paper reviews Thailand's structural changes, the 1997 crisis experience, and recovery and lessons from the crisis. The paper then discusses the impacts of the subprime crisis on the Thai economy and the policy responses to date. The paper ends by discussing strategies to rebalance growth by reducing the dependence on exports as the main growth engine. The recovery from the 1997 crisis left Thailand more dependent than ever on exports as the main engine of growth, with the ratio of exports to gross domestic product (GDP) increasing from a precrisis level of about 38% to about 65% recently. The lessons learned from the 1997 crisis led to a more risk-averse financial system, and this helped Thailand avoid the direct impacts of the subprime crisis. However, being highly dependent on exports, Thailand, along with other export oriented East Asian economies, is now heavily affected by the indirect impacts of the subprime crisis, especially in the export industries. Exports and GDP have dropped sharply over the past two quarters. The government has been using fiscal stimulus and monetary easing measures to try to improve the economy. These measures are mostly short-term in nature, and if the subprime crisis is protracted, then the sustainability of the fiscal stimulus will be called into question. In the medium- to long-term, Thailand needs to move to a more balanced growth path, depending less on exports (although exports will still be important) and more on other, domestic sources of growth. The paper concludes by discussing a number of policy strategies that will contribute to a more balanced growth path.

This study estimates the impacts of different types of government expenditure on agricultural growth and rural poverty in Thailand. The results show that, despite Thailand's middle-income status, public investments in agricultural R&D, irrigation, rural education, and infrastructure (including roads and electricity), still have positive marginal impacts on agricultural productivity growth and rural poverty reduction. Additional government spending on agricultural research and development improves agricultural productivity the most and has the second largest impact on rural poverty reduction. Investments in rural electrification reduce poverty the most and have the second largest growth impact. These two investments dominate all others and are win-win for growth and poverty reduction. Road expenditure has the third largest impact on rural poverty reduction, but only a modest and statistically insignificant impact on agricultural productivity. Government spending on rural education has only the fourth largest impact on poverty, but a significant economic impact through improved agricultural productivity. Irrigation investment has the smallest impact on both rural poverty reduction and productivity growth in agriculture. Additional investments in the Northeast region contribute more to reducing poverty than investments in other regions. This is because most of the poor are now concentrated in the Northeast and it has suffered from under investment in the past. The poverty reducing impacts of infrastructure investments, such as electricity and roads, are particularly high in this region. The growth impacts of many investments are also greatest in the Northeast than in other regions, hence there is no evident tradeoff between investments for growth and investments for poverty reduction. Thailand is a middle-income country and it is insightful to compare these results with similar studies undertaken in low-income countries like India, China, and Uganda. Some of the results are similar, for example, the high returns to public investments in agricultural research and some kinds of rural infrastructure arise in most countries because of the inherent market failures associated with these types of public goods. But others results are different. For example, the returns to public investment in education in Thailand are quite low, partly because of increasing private investment but also the inappropriate composition of much public spending on education. Within infrastructure, results from low-income countries often show higher returns to road investments than telecommunications and electricity. But in the case of Thailand, it is investment in electricity that shows the highest return. Thailand has invested heavily in rural roads and a dense road network has already been built, suggesting that additional investment may yield diminishing returns. Also, there has been significant investment by the private sector in rural telecommunication, leading to a much-reduced role for the public sector. This situation differs from many low-income countries, especially in Africa, where the private sector is still embryonic and the public sector must play a dominant investment role for the foreseeable future. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; GRP3; Theme 9; Public Policy and Investment ; DSGD