Asia-Pacific Development Journal - Volume 18, Issue 2, 2012

While much has been said about the need to promote intraregional trade and the importance of reducing associated trade costs, quantitative estimates of such costs have been lacking. In this paper a new comprehensive measure of international trade costs is applied to calculate, according to value, trade costs within and between four Asian subregions, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Extraregional trade costs of the four subregions with free trade areas outside Asia, such as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU), as well as their trade costs with China, India and Japan are also calculated. The analysis concludes with an evaluation of the importance of tariffs in overall trade costs and with the identification of sharp differences across Asian subregions.

Social security and social protection concepts are gaining importance, especially in the Pacific Island countries (PICs). The state-led welfare and social protection system is limited in PICs, where there has been a heavy reliance on traditional, informal and non-state social protection systems which are provided through extended family, kinship, and community. The aim of the paper is to examine the nature of traditional, informal and semi-formal social security and protection mechanisms within PICs, to explore the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) in providing social security and safety nets and to aid in enhancing social development in PICs.

Emigrants possess knowledge regarding the cultures and social environments of host and sending countries that can help strengthen the economic relationship between these countries. We find this to be true for Pakistan and its selected Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) trading partners on whom data are available. During the period 1990-2003, Pakistan had a positive trade balance, on average, with English speaking countries, and a negative balance with non-English speaking countries of the OECD. Gravity model estimates, obtained in this study, suggest that the annual increase in the number of Pakistani emigrants in OECD countries accounted for a quarter of the annual growth in Pakistani net exports to the English speaking countries over the period of this study. Pakistan’s trade deficit with non-English speaking countries would have been at least 46 per cent higher had there been no increase in its expatriate population in those countries which appears to be engaged in import substitution activities. This study provides important input pertaining to the debate on the economic effects of emigration from developing countries.

The opening up of financial markets in India has led to significant transformation within the financial sector, which has become more integrated with international stock markets. The general concern which is emerging with such development is the increased volatility of equity returns. This paper explores the relationship between volatility within not only the Indian equity market but also within other developed and emerging markets as well. Based on a daily data set for more than nine years, this paper estimates a joint Vector Auto Regression/Multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (VARMGARCH) model. As the existing literature suggests, returns in the United States of America, the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong, China have a definite effect on returns in India. More interesting is the finding that Indian market returns also affect the returns in other markets such as Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong, China. In addition, return volatility of the Indian market does not have an increasing or declining trend, but exhibits sudden sharp increases over the sample period. The conditional correlation of the Indian equity market return with all the other markets has increased over time in recent years.

There is a consensus on the importance of rural roads when increasing economic growth and household welfare. However, little is known regarding the positive effect these roads will have on the welfare of households in Viet Nam. This paper aims to measure that effect. It is known that rural roads help households increase per capita income and working hours. The estimated impact of these roads on expenditure, the share of non-farm income, and children’s schooling rate is not statistically significant.