Suchergebnisse

Global oil prices have subsided relative to the peak reached in mid-2008, but compared to historical levels they remain elevated and volatile as economic uncertainties continue to unfold. The likelihood of these prices rising again soon cannot be ruled out. High oil prices can adversely affect growth, employment, external accounts, and fiscal positions of governments. An overwhelming response across Asia as international oil prices spiked in 2008 was to shield domestic consumers more than before through oil subsidies, which are inequitable, economically inefficient, and environmentally unfriendly. These subsidies add directly to the fiscal deficit and public debt, but are generally hidden, making their measurement difficult. Additionally, in combination with lower growth rates, higher spending to rev up demand across Asia is also worsening the fiscal positions of governments. This paper computes the transmission of recent global oil price movements to domestic markets and estimates oil price subsidies in a diverse group of 32 Asian economies. Using data for 18 of these countries and applying a forward-looking methodology for debt dynamics, the paper then examines the potential impact of responses to macroeconomic shocks and a possible rise in oil prices on public debt and estimates the fiscal correction needed to sustain debt at a steady-state level. Based on the findings from the empirical analysis, the paper extracts some guiding principles for fiscal policy responses to the economic shocks depending on country-specific circumstances.

Governance in Developing Asia is one of the first books of its kind to provide an overview of the role that better governance and citizen empowerment can play in improving public service delivery in developing Asia. The World Development Report 2004 set a framework for public service delivery in terms of the short and long roads to accountability of service providers to citizens. More than a decade on, this important book revisits the issue and departs from the WDR framework, highlighting its shortcomings and offering alternative solutions. The contributors present fresh evidence on the relati

We study why the relationship between education and log-wages has become more convex in India, the Philippines and Thailand. To do so, we develop decompositions connecting returns to education, and shifts in those returns, to the evolving structure of employment. Returns to college depend mostly upon high-skill service jobs. While relative demand for college graduates in that sector generally rose, its employment share grew slowly, pushing workers with secondary education into less skill intensive services. Services employment, which grew fast, therefore became more menial on average. These polarizing trends in services account for the growing convexity of the Mincerian wage profile. The effects of industrialization on the returns to secondary education depend upon the composition of manufacturing employment. Slow structural transformation when educational attainment increases rapidly causes education inflation, and drives down the returns to secondary education. This constrains governments' seeking to use educational expansion to alter the wage distribution.

Developing Asia's infrastructure gap results from both inadequate public resources and a lack of effective channel to mobilize private resources toward desired outcomes. The public-private partnership (PPP) mechanism has evolved to fill the infrastructure gap. However, PPP projects are often at risk of becoming distressed or worst being terminated because of the long-term nature of contracts and the many different stakeholders involved. This paper applies survival time hazard analysis to estimate how project-related, macroeconomic, and institutional factors affect the hazard rate of the projects. Empirical results show that government's provision of guarantees, involvement of multilateral development banks, and existence of a dedicated PPP unit are important for a project's success. Privately initiated proposals should be regulated and undergo a competitive bidding to reduce the hazard rate of the project and the corresponding burden to government. Economic growth leads to successful project outcomes. Improved legal and institutional environment can ensure PPP success.

Investment-driven growth has long been regarded as a key development strategy in China. This paper investigates empirically the validity of this view. Post-1990 data analyses and macroeconometric model simulations show that market demand has become a regular force in driving investment since reforms, that non-demand-driven investment growth contributes to increasing capital-output ratio far more than output growth, that government investment exerts a pivotal role in amplifying investment cycles, albeit effective in promoting employment, and that delayed and rising consumption from current investment surge can help sustain the impact of growth even with constant-returns-to-scale in the long-run GDP.

Developing Asia's infrastructure gap results from both inadequate public resources and a lack of effective channels to mobilize private resources toward desired outcomes. The public-private partnership (PPP) mechanism has evolved to fill the infrastructure gap. However, PPP projects are often at risk of becoming distressed, or worst, being terminated because of the long-term nature of contracts and the many different stakeholders involved. This paper applies survival-time hazard analysis to estimate how project-related, macroeconomic, and institutional factors affect the hazard rate of the projects. Empirical results show that government's provision of guarantees, involvement of multilateral development banks, and existence of a dedicated PPP unit are important for a project's success. Privately initiated proposals should be regulated and undergo competitive bidding to reduce the hazard rate of the project and the corresponding burden to the government. Economic growth leads to successful project outcomes. Improved legal and institutional environment can ensure PPP success.