The Engagement of China in Nigeria’s Oil Sector: Is the Transformation Positive?

Many a time, the relationship between China and Africa is stereotyped as an energy quest to sustain China’s economic growth, leading to anti-Chinese resistance narratives in Africa. Against this background, the observed presence of China in Nigeria, more specifically, warrants attention, as the strategic relationship has expanded significantly to emerge as a powerful, yet questionable, South-South alliance. We document the economic activities of China in Nigeria, through the channels of trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), and aid, to frame our understanding of the content of those ties. As the engagement of China in Nigeria is skewed towards the extractive industry, this paper mainly focuses on Nigeria’s oil sector, by tracing the transforming developments and addressing the challenges of Nigeria that relates with economic, environmental and social life, with China’s commercial presence in the oil sector. With the economic dimensions of this contextual engagement, we set out a research agenda that focuses on the effectiveness of commercial activities of China in the Nigerian oil sector

Determinants of Infant Mortality in Older ASEAN Economies

Infant mortality in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been declining, yet disparities remain between the nations. This paper therefore explores the determinants of infant mortality in the older ASEAN-4 economies, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Error Correction Model framework. The key findings of the study are: First, there is evidence of long-run relationships among infant mortality, education, female fertility, income and access to healthcare. Second, the determinants of infant mortality vary between countries. Female fertility emerged as the main determinant of infant mortality in Malaysia, while access to healthcare matter for infant mortality in Indonesia, and to a lesser extent for the Philippines. The income effect is significant for reducing infant mortality in Malaysia, while female education is important for Indonesia and Thailand. Third, the speed of adjustment of infant mortality rate is comparatively low in ASEAN-4

Trade linkages and domestic market concentration: an empirical exploration for Malaysia

This paper examines the univariate relationship between global linkages of the Malaysian manufacturing sector in the form of export intensity and intra-industry trade, respectively, on inter-industry concentration. The recently developed fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) panel cointegration techniques are employed. The estimated long-run coefficients reveal that intra-industry trade contributes towards more concentrated markets. However, export intensity is not significantly associated with market dominance. This suggests that domestic market structure is directly related to industries that engage in two-way trade flows or trade overlap. The structure of trade therefore deserves further attention when analyzing market dominance in the Malaysian manufacturing sector, which is globally integrated at the production level. It would thus be viable to examine why and to what extent vertically integrated industries that simultaneously facilitate not just external markets for components or final products but also the import markets for components (inputs) pose barriers to industries that are less networked globally

FRAMING CHINA-MALAYSIA TRADE RELATIONS BEYOND ASEAN: FACTORING THE REGIONAL COMPREHENSIVE ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP

ABSTRAC

Le misure non tariffarie in ASEAN: dalle evidenze alle politiche

https://www.twai.it/articles/le-misure-non-tariffarie-in-asean

The impact of foreign labour on host country wages: the experience of a southern host, Malaysia

This paper investigates the impact of foreign labour on domestic manufacturing wages through a case study of Malaysia, a country where foreign labour immigration has played a key role in manufacturing growth over the past two decades. The main focus of the paper is on an econometric analysis of the determinants of inter-industry variation in wage growth using a new panel dataset. The results suggest that wage growth is fundamentally embedded in the structure and performance of domestic manufacturing. There is evidence of a statistically significant negative impact of foreign labour on the growth of unskilled-worker wages, but the magnitude of the impact is rather small

Cross-border shopping: examining motivations from the perspective of Bruneian visitors in Limbang, Malaysia

A tourism generating activity that is becoming increasingly important in border-towns of Malaysia is cross-border shopping. The present study investigates the cross-border shopping behavior of Bruneian visitors in Limbang, Sarawak, Malaysia. The objective is to profile the demographic characteristics of the visitors; their spending patterns; and analyze the motivating factors for cross-border shopping. The present study makes three principal findings. First, most of the Bruneian cross-border shoppers are found to be day trippers from the lower income group. Second, the analyses reveal that the purchasing behavior of day trippers differs from that of short-term visitors. The former tends to spend more on food and beverages, whilst the latter are attracted to services in Limbang, such as entertainment outlets. Third, the three major motivating factors from the nine underlying dimensional influences of Brunei-Limbang cross-border shopping are the favourable exchange rate; the various/reliable services available; and the retail atmosphere, which are compensated for by the safe and easy access to Limbang and the low transport costs associated with the travel

The Impact of Foreign Labor on Host Country Wages: The Experience of a Southern Host, Malaysia

This paper investigates the impact of foreign labor on domestic manufacturing wages through a case study of Malaysia, a country where foreign labor has played a key role in manufacturing growth over the past two decades. The main focus of the paper is o

Determinants of female fertility in ASEAN-5: empirical evidence from bounds cointegration test

The ASEAN countries have been experiencing drastic declines in fertility of more than 10 percent, particularly since the 1990s. Though the literature on fertility has clearly delineated the importance of income, female labor force participation and infant mortality as key determinants of fertility rates (FRs), the empirical findings from previous studies remains at best mixed. This study therefore identifies the determinants of female fertility for the countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand (ASEAN-5 countries), spanning the period 1980–2010. Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration and causality techniques, the main findings of the study are summarized as follows: First, a long-run (LR) stable relationship is evident between female fertility, female labor force participation, income and infant mortality for ASEAN-5. Second, there is a deviation of FRs from the short-run (SR) to the LR equilibrium for ASEAN-5, with the highest and lowest speed of adjustment recorded for Malaysia and Thailand, respectively. Third, FR and economic stability are found to be complementary in the LR for ASEAN-5. When the joint LR and SR causalities are considered, we found that female labor force participation, income and infant mortality have dynamic relationships with FR for all the five ASEAN countries