“Eradicate Extreme Poverty:The Need for a Legally Binding Commitment for Aid Delivery” (July 2013)

The paper argues that abject poverty in the developing world is a negative factor in the international economy, and thus it exerts an enormous cost to the global community. From the threat of crisis of existence facing the masses of poorest of the poor and also from the perspective of global public goods, this paper suggests a new framework of international aid. The proposed new aid framework comprises two stages.The first stage is a legally binding aid assured by an international treaty framework for the purpose of alleviating absolute poverty in the developing world. The contributors to this legally binding aid system are advanced countries, emerging economies and developing countries. The second stage is for the purpose of enhancing productivity and thus income in less developed countries-where absolute poverty has been eliminated-by conventional ODA with modifications. The focus of this second stage is capacity building and the enhancement of economic institutions for promoting industrial development, technology transfer, financial deepening, trade and investment, higher education, enhancement of social economic infrastructures and institutions. ( JEL: F35, F53

Commodity-industry classificationproxy: A correspondence table between SITC revision 2 and ISIC revision 3

The correspondence table is one of the important tools in categorizing existing records into different perspective. It helps to understand the pattern of various economic activities from single source of data. Nevertheless, most of the existing correspondence tables have been focusing more on the latest classification and neglect the correspondence for the older version. Since some analysis would require longer series of data, therefore it is necessary to create a correspondence table for the earlier version of classification. This paper devoted to create a correspondence table between SITC Revision 2 and ISIC Revision 3 using a proxy method. The proxy is done using the SITC Rev.2 – SITC Rev.3 correspondence table and the SITC Rev.3 – ISIC Rev.3 correspondence table. This method has capable to directly find an industrial match for more than 98 percent of commodities under SITC Rev.3. For remaining commodities which industrial category cannot be matched directly, the identification was done automatically based on the closest code.Commodity, Industry SITC Rev.2, SITC Rev.3, ISIC Rev.3, correspondence table

Export Diversification and Economic Growth in Malaysia

This paper examines the relationship between export diversification and economic growth in Malaysia. We use annual data from 1980-2007 and time-series techniques of cointegration and Granger causality tests to examine the long-run relationship and dynamic interactions among the variables. The results show the presence of a unique cointegrating vector among the four variables. Consistent with previous studies, we found that export diversification plays significant roles to economic growth in Malaysia. This finding suggests that, in order to sustain future economic growth under the static effect of multilateral and regional trade liberalization, Malaysia should diversify its export commodities and develop greater social and economic cooperation with the rest of the world. As an export-oriented economy, in the long run, export diversification strategy could help stabilizing Malaysia’s export earnings.export diversification, economic growth, revealed comparative advantage

An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Behaviors in Chinese Urban Areas

Using the model specification of Deaton-Muelbauer (1980), this empirical study analyzes two data sets, viz., a time series aggregated data on Chinese urban household disposable income and consumption expenditure on eight major items from 1992 to 2012 and a cross-sectional data collected from a questionnaire survey conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Qingdao (BSTQ) with regard to isposable income and consumption expenditure in eight major items.The analytical results of marginal propensity to consume suggest that in order to stimulate domestic private consumption in China, policy interventions in higher income groups, preferably on disposable income less than 67,000RMB are desirable. From the findings, it is interesting to note that notwithstanding that the provision of education is free from primary school to junior high school, the respondents from BSTQ with disposable income higher than 67,000RMB seem to emphasize on the quality of education of their children. In addition, the findings also suggest that policy for the provision of affordable housing in Chinese urban areas will need to focus on disposable income level of less than 67,000RMB. From the empirical evidences, the disposable income level of 26,000-48, 000RMB is not high enough to pay for adequate attention on medical and health services. Although the provision in medical and health services in China but it is a luxury item for the people in lower income group.Regarding the compensated own-price elasticity of demand in lower income groups, the results showthat demand of “ food, ” “ clothing ” and “ medical ” is influenced positively by the changes in prices. It is worth noting that the rise in disposable income has a negative influence on “housing” for disposable income below 67,000RMB but it has a positive influenced for higher disposable income that is above 92,000RMB. Similarly, the demand for “medical” and “education and culture” also positively correlated to the rise of disposable income particularly for disposable income above 92,000RMB. Cross-price elasticity of demand of one expenditure item with another changes accordingly with the level of disposable income. A pair of net complementary goods changes to a pair of net substitute goods (e. g., “clothing” and “housing,” “housing” and “food”). Additionally this shift is also apparent with the rise of disposable income (e. g., “medical” and “housing”). The reverse, viz., the shift from a pair of net substitute goods to a pair of net complementary goods also occur (e. g., “housing” and “education”, “education” and “food”) when the disposable income increased

Leadership and Organizational Management in Japan

This paper explains leadership and organizational management in Japan based on the authorʼs observations and thus his interpretations of Japanese styles of management. The explanation ranges from: key drivers of Japanʼ s economic development; leadership in the Japanese context; how a leaderless Japanese organization creates leadership; why a leaderless Japanese organization performs well; Japanese organization management is indeed a process of continuous learning; the role of information sharing and communication for the effective organizational management; the influence of information technology; Japanese organizational management in the context of principle-agent approach; several limitations and challenges of Japanese organizational management. This paper argues that Japanese organizational management styles are applicable to late industrialized countries if the attempt was modified by incorporating their own cultural attributes