Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis, The

The Asian crisis has sparked a thoroughgoing reappraisal of current international financial norms, the policy prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund, and the adequacy of the existing financial architecture. To draw proper policy conclusions from the crisis, it is necessary to understand exactly what happened and why from both a political and an economic perspective. In this study, renowned political scientist Stephan Haggard examines the political aspects of the crisis in the countries most affected--Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. * Haggard focuses on the political economy of the crisis, emphasizing the longer-run problems of moral hazard and corruption, as well as the politics of crisis management and the political fallout that ensued. He looks at the degree to which each government has rewoven the social safety net and discusses corporate and financial restructuring and greater transparency in business-government relations. Professor Haggard provides a counterpoint to the analysis by examining why Singapore, Taiwan, and the Philippines escaped financial calamity.

Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform

In the mid-1990s, as many as one million North Koreans died in one of the worst famines of the twentieth century. The socialist food distribution system collapsed primarily because of a misguided push for self-reliance, but was compounded by the regime's failure to formulate a quick response-including the blocking of desperately needed humanitarian relief. * As households, enterprises, local party organs, and military units tried to cope with the economic collapse, a grassroots process of marketization took root. However, rather than embracing these changes, the North Korean regime opted for tentative economic reforms with ambiguous benefits and a self-destructive foreign policy. As a result, a chronic food shortage continues to plague North Korea today. * In their carefully researched book, Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland present the most comprehensive and penetrating account of the famine to date, examining not only the origins and aftermath of the crisis but also the regime's response to outside aid and the effect of its current policies on the country's economic future. Their study begins by considering the root causes of the famine, weighing the effects of the decline in the availability of food against its poor distribution. Then it takes a close look at the aid effort, addressing the difficulty of monitoring assistance within the country, and concludes with an analysis of current economic reforms and strategies of engagement. * North Korea's famine exemplified the depredations that can arise from tyrannical rule and the dilemmas such regimes pose for the humanitarian community, as well as the obstacles inherent in achieving economic and political reform. To reveal the state's culpability in this tragic event is a vital project of historical recovery, one that is especially critical in light of our current engagement with the "North Korean question."

The political economy of inflation and stabilization in middle-income countries

In a number of middle-income developing countries, the severe inflationary crises of the 1980s coincided with political liberalization and an expansion of the arena of distributive politics. This wave of democratization raises questions that have recurred throughout the post-World War II period. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the politics of inflation and stabilization in seventeen Latin American and Asian countries, paying particular attention to social movements and governments that seek to mobilize the popular sector. The paper reviews the arguments linking political constraints to macroeconomic policy and inflation, especially the role that populism might play in propagating inflation. It examines the inflation histories of three groups of middle-income countries: those that have maintained relatively stable macroeconomic policies over the long-run; those that have periodically experienced severe difficulties, but managed to adjust; and those that experienced recurrent cycles of very high inflation over an extended period. The paper draws more extensively on case studies of particular inflation episodes to examine the conditions under which inflation has been brought down, paying particular attention to the effect of regime type on stabilization efforts.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Inflation

Reform from Below: Behavioral and Institutional Change in North Korea

The state is often conceptualized as playing an enabling role in a country's economic development--providing public goods, such as the legal protection of property rights, while the political economy of reform is conceived in terms of bargaining over policy among elites or special interest groups. We document a case that turns this perspective on its head: efficiency-enhancing institutional and behavioral changes arising not out of a conscious, top-down program of reform, but rather as unintended (and in some respects, unwanted) by-products of state failure. Responses from a survey of North Korean refugees demonstrate that the North Korean economy marketized in response to state failure with the onset of famine in the 1990s, and subsequent reforms and retrenchments appear to have had remarkably little impact on some significant share of the population. There is strong evidence of powerful social changes, including increasing inequality, corruption, and changed attitudes about the most effective pathways to higher social status and income. These assessments appear to be remarkably uniform across demographic groups. While the survey sample marginally overweights demographic groups with less favorable assessments of the regime, even counterfactually recalibrating the sample to match the underlying resident population suggests widespread dissatisfaction with the North Korean regime.failed states, transition, reform, North Korea, refugees

North Korea’s External Economic Relations

North Korea’s international transactions have grown since the 1990s famine period. Illicit transactions appear to account for a declining share of trade. Direct investment is rising, but the county remains significantly dependent on aid to finance imports. Interdependence with South Korea and China is rising, but the nature of integration with these two partners is very different: China’s interaction with North Korea appears to be increasingly on market-oriented terms, while South Korea’s involvement has a growing noncommercial or aid component. These patterns have implications for North Korea’s development, the effectiveness of UN sanctions, and its bargaining behavior in nuclear negotiations.North Korea, sanctions, political economy, aid, transitional economies

A Security and Peace Mechanism for Northeast Asia: The Economic Dimension

The creation of an enduring multilateral security and peace mechanism for Northeast Asia and the furthering of regional economic cooperation have been identified as components of a final resolution of the North Korean nuclear controversy in the Six Party Talks among the United States, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and North Korea. Haggard and Noland argue that a central objective should be North Korea's integration into the world economy, encouraging its economic revival and the resolution of its chronic humanitarian problems, as well as embedding it in relations that could reduce the likelihood of future disruptive behavior. Reform and the international private sector's involvement in the country's economic renewal are key. Yet the North Korean tail should not wag the dog: To be fruitful and politically sustainable, the agenda must engage the interests of all six parties, not just those of North Korea. With progress stalled on more legalistic forms of regional integration, the authors suggest that the Economy and Energy Cooperation Working Group, created by the six parties in February 2007, could become the locus for wider economic cooperation and thus complement the security agenda for Northeast Asia.

Political attitudes under repression: evidence from North Korean refugees

What do citizens of highly repressive regimes think about their governments? How do they respond to high levels of repression? This paper addresses these questions by examining the political attitudes of North Korean refugees. Unsurprisingly the evaluations of regime performance are negative, and there is some evidence that they are becoming more so, even among the core political class and government or party workers. While the sample marginally overrepresents groups with the most negative evaluation of the regime, multivariate analysis is used to generate projections of the views of the wider population; this exercise indicates that that the null hypothesis that the refugees accurately represent the views of the resident population cannot be rejected at the 95 percent level. However the survey also shows that the barriers to effective communication and collective action remain high; repression works to deter political activity. Partly due to economic exigency, partly due to repression, private defiance of the government takes the form of “everyday forms of resistance,” such as listening to foreign media and engaging in market activities. Although not overtly political, these actions have long-term political consequences.information cascades; preference falsification; North Korea; refugees; political repression; unification

The Winter of Their Discontent: Pyongyang Attacks the Market

North Korea's confiscatory currency reform and the subsequent ban on the use of foreign currencies are economically misguided policies and will result in the reduction of North Korean residents' welfare. These developments come at an inopportune time with the country facing economic stagnation, spiraling prices, and a resurgence of food shortages. North Korea has made no attempt to veil its motivations: strengthening the socialist economy by directly attacking the market and the independence from state control that it represents. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland posit that these policies will require a ratcheting up of already high levels of repression, and as long as the state lacks the resources and capacity to provide goods to its citizens, the effort is unlikely to significantly contribute to the stated goal of rebuilding socialism or eradicating the market. The open questions are whether the policies will be reversed and whether they have sown such discontent as to threaten political stability. The survival instincts of North Korea's determined, resilient citizens may very well make the market a locus of precisely the political activity the regime seeks to thwart.