This paper documents the compilation of a Pre-Prototype 2015 Social Accounting Matrix for Myanmar and provides an overview of key economic structural features of this emerging economy in a challenging process of transition. We built this Social Accounting Matrix using National Accounts and Supply and Use Table data as well as Balance of Payment data for the 2014-15 fiscal year together with Government Budget Statistics from the 2017 Statistical Yearbook. It provides a detailed representation of the Myanmar economy and identifies 43 activities and 43 commodities. We disaggregated labour by education attainment level and household income and expenditure by per capita expenditure quintiles for both urban and rural areas and farm and non-farm categories. The Social Accounting Matrix features government, investment, and foreign accounts and is a key database for conducting economy-wide impact assessments to strengthen the evidence underlying policy interventions.
In: van Seventer , D , Tarp , F , San , N N & Myint Thein , K O 2019 ' A Pre-Prototype 2015 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Myanmar ' 2019 edn , UNU-WIDER , Helsinki , pp. 1-23 . https://doi.org/10.35188/UNU-WIDER/2019/655-5
This paper documents the compilation of a Pre-Prototype 2015 Social Accounting Matrix for Myanmar and provides an overview of key economic structural features of this emerging economy in a challenging process of transition. We built this Social Accounting Matrix using National Accounts and Supply and Use Table data as well as Balance of Payment data for the 2014–15 fiscal year together with Government Budget Statistics from the 2017 Statistical Yearbook. It provides a detailed representation of the Myanmar economy and identifies 43 activities and 43 commodities. We disaggregated labour by education attainment level and household income and expenditure by per capita expenditure quintiles for both urban and rural areas and farm and non-farm categories. The Social Accounting Matrix features government, investment, and foreign accounts and is a key database for conducting economy-wide impact assessments to strengthen the evidence underlying policy interventions.
In this paper we describe the major trends in China's income inequality over the past 40 years and explain them as the outcome of four interleaved stories. The first story is a standard development story characterized by structural change, market development, labour absorption, and the Kuznets inverted-U path of inequality. The second is the economic transition story, in which changes in income distribution result from the shift from plan to market. Third is incomplete transition, with opportunities for rent-seeking, corruption, and hidden income. Fourth is the story of government efforts to moderate inequality through social and welfare policies.
In this paper we describe the major trends in China's income inequality over the past 40 years and explain them as the outcome of four interleaved stories. The first story is a standard development story characterized by structural change, market development, labour absorption, and the Kuznets inverted-U path of inequality. The second is the economic transition story, in which changes in income distribution result from the shift from plan to market. Third is incomplete transition, with opportunities for rent-seeking, corruption, and hidden income. Fourth is the story of government efforts to moderate inequality through social and welfare policies.
In: Newman , C , Page , J , Rand , J , Shimeles , A , Söderbom , M & Tarp , F 2018 ' Linked in by foreign direct investment : The role of firm-level relationships in knowledge transfers in Africa and Asia ' .
This study combines evidence from interviews in seven countries with (i) government institutions responsible for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), (ii) 102 multinational enterprises (MNEs), and (iii) 226 domestic firms linked to these foreign affiliates as suppliers, customers, or competitors. The purpose of the interviews was to identify whether relations between MNEs and domestic firms lead to direct transfers of knowledge/technology. We first document that there are relatively few linkages between MNEs and domestic firms in sub-Saharan Africa compared with Asia. However, when linkages are present in sub-Saharan Africa, they raise the likelihood of direct knowledge/technology transfers from MNEs to domestic firms as compared with linked-in firms in Asia. Finally, we do not find that direct knowledge/technology transfers are more likely to occur via FDI than through trade. As such, our results are not consistent with the view that tacit knowledge transfers are more likely to occur through localized linkages.
This study combines evidence from interviews in seven countries with (i) government institutions responsible for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), (ii) 102 multinational enterprises (MNEs), and (iii) 226 domestic firms linked to these foreign affiliates as suppliers, customers, or competitors. The purpose of the interviews was to identify whether relations between MNEs and domestic firms lead to direct transfers of knowledge/technology. We first document that there are relatively few linkages between MNEs and domestic firms in sub-Saharan Africa compared with Asia. However, when linkages are present in sub-Saharan Africa, they raise the likelihood of direct knowledge/technology transfers from MNEs to domestic firms as compared with linked-in firms in Asia. Finally, we do not find that direct knowledge/technology transfers are more likely to occur via FDI than through trade. As such, our results are not consistent with the view that tacit knowledge transfers are more likely to occur through localized linkages.
In: Berkel , H M , Cardona , M , Hansen , H , Rand , J , Castro Rodriguez , P , Trifkovic , N , de Witte , E , Zille , H , Latt , K S & Tarp , F 2018 , Myanmar Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Survey 2017 : Descriptive Report . UNU-WIDER .
Myanmar's transition to a market-based economy is accompanied by rapid development of the private manufacturing sector, which has large potential for improving economic growth. The overall success of the sector, however, should not be taken for granted. Future advances will greatly depend on the policy and business environment in which manufacturing activities take place. It is, therefore, important to better understand the business environment and help inform policies conducive to sustainable economic growth. The Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) of the Ministry of Planning and Finance of Myanmar, the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), and the University of Copenhagen, supported financially by the Government of Denmark, have initiated the project 'Towards Inclusive Development in Myanmar'. The project aims to strengthen evidence-based policy-making and analysis through a rigorous 'Myanmar Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Survey' of private manufacturing enterprises. The survey is the first nationally representative survey focusing exclusively on manufacturing enterprises and their employees. The data were collected in 35 townships in all regions and states of the country in 2017. The sample comprises 2,496 enterprises and 6,722 employees and is statistically representative of more than 71,000 manufacturing firms in Myanmar. The resulting matched employer–employee dataset is unique in its ability to provide estimates of individual-level outcomes, alongside company averages and results for both informal and formal businesses. The breadth of information is unprecedented, and it will allow analysts to study enterprise performance and the business environment in Myanmar in depth, including dimensions such as: regulatory framework (e.g. formalization), firm performance, labour force, technology and management characteristics, innovation, investment, sales, access to finance, and perceptions about the constraints and potentials of the business environment.
Many developing countries—Viet Nam included—continue to struggle to raise incomes per capita. A common feature of the growth and development process is a fundamental change in the pattern of economic activity, as households reallocate labour from traditional agriculture to more productive forms of agriculture and modern industrial and service sectors. Broad structural transformation and widespread poverty reduction is the combined result of these large-scale shifts in work and labour allocation when they realize desired development goals. The roots of this book grow from when the first pilot Viet Nam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) was carried out in 2002. The success of this inspired the Central Institute of Economic Management (CIEM) in Hanoi, the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (CAP-IPSARD), the Institute of Labour Science and Social Affairs (ILSSA), and the Development Economics Research Group (DERG) of the University of Copenhagen, together with Danida and, later on, UNU-WIDER, to plan and carry out a more ambitious VARHS from 2006, increasing coverage and representativeness to more than 2,150 families and 12 provinces across the various regions of Viet Nam. The VARHS covering these very same households had, by 2014, been carried out five times, that is, every two years. It is on this high-quality panel data foundation and almost fifteen years of study and policy work using the VARHS data that the present volume builds, in its effort to bring out the essential rural microeconomic characteristics and insights of a dynamic South-East Asian economy in transition from a centrally planned towards a more market-based economy.
In: Tarp , F 2017 , Viet Nam : Setting the Scene . in F Tarp (ed.) , Growth, Structural Transformation, and Rural Change in Viet Nam : A Rising Dragon on the Move . Oxford University Press , UNU-WIDER Studies in Development Economics , pp. 1-25 . https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198796961.003.0001
Viet Nam is a populous Southeast Asian economy with a particular socioeconomic and political history. At the end of the 'American War' in 1975 ambitions for the future were high, but despite its many potentials, the economy remained poor. International isolation played its role as did centralist policies; and the five-year plan adopted in 1976 turned out as a complete failure. Economic policies started to be reversed following economic collapse in the mid-1980s, and Viet Nam initiated its home-grown Doi Moi reform process. Accordingly, wide-ranging institutional reforms have been gradually implemented since then, including a greater reliance on market forces in the allocation of resources and the determination of prices. A shift from an economy dominated by the state and cooperative sectors to a situation where the private sector and foreign investment account for a relatively high proportion of GDP can also be noted.
Detailed analyses of poverty and wellbeing in developing countries, based on household surveys, have been ongoing for more than three decades. The large majority of developing countries now regularly conduct a variety of household surveys, and their information base with respect to poverty and wellbeing has improved dramatically. Nevertheless, appropriate measurement of poverty remains complex and controversial. This is particularly true in developing countries where (i) the stakes with respect to poverty reduction are high; (ii) the determinants of living standards are often volatile; and (iii) related information bases, while much improved, are often characterized by significant non-sample error. It also remains, to a surprisingly high degree, an activity undertaken by technical assistance personnel and consultants based in developed countries. This book seeks to enhance the transparency, replicability, and comparability of existing practice. It also aims to significantly lower the barriers to entry to the conduct of rigorous poverty measurement and increase the participation of analysts from developing countries in their own poverty assessments. The book focuses on two domains: the measurement of absolute consumption poverty and a first-order dominance approach to multidimensional welfare analysis. In each domain, it provides a series of computer codes designed to facilitate analysis by allowing the analyst to start from a flexible and known base. The volume covers the theoretical grounding for the code streams provided, a chapter on 'estimation in practice', a series of eleven case studies where the code streams are operationalized, a synthesis, an extension to inequality, and a look forward.
Africa's Lions examines the economic growth experiences of six fast-growing and/or economically dominant African countries. Expert African researchers offer unique perspectives into the challenges and issues in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa. Despite a growing body of research on African economies, very little research has focused on the relationship between economic growth and employment outcomes at the detailed country level. A lack of empirical data has, in many cases, deprived policymakers of a robust evidence base on which to make informed decisions. By harnessing country-level household, firm, and national accounts data, together with existing analytical country research, the authors have attempted to bridge this gap
Much of the information relevant to policy formulation for industrial development is held by the private sector, not by public officials. There is, therefore, fairly broad agreement in the development literature that some form of structured engagement—often referred to as close or strategic coordination—between the public and private sectors is needed, to assist in the design of appropriate policies and provide feedback on their implementation. There is less agreement on how that engagement should be structured, how its objectives be defined, and how success be measured. In fact, the academic literature provides little practical guidance on how governments interested in developing such a framework should go about doing it. The burden of this lack of guidance falls most heavily on Africa, where—despite twenty years of growth—lack of structural transformation has slowed job creation and the pace of poverty reduction. In 2014, the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) launched a joint research project: The Practice of Industrial Policy. The aim is to help African policy makers develop better coordination between public and private sectors in order to identify the constraints to faster structural transformation and design, implement, and monitor policies to remove them. This book, written by national researchers and international experts, presents the results of that research by combining a set of analytical 'framing' essays on close coordination with case studies of successful and unsuccessful efforts at close coordination in Africa and in comparator countries.