Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Journal - Volume 26, Issue 1, 2019

The present paper provides estimates of the value of the digital economy of New Zealand through the use of the supply-use tables. By design, no changes are made to the production boundary as the products being assessed are already included within the production boundary and gross domestic product (GDP). The approach is a practical attempt at using the framework first presented in the paper entitled “Measuring digital trade: towards a conceptual framework”, and in particular, the “nature” component of the framework. This is extended to the whole economy to identify “digital” transactions in the country’s National Accounts Commodity Classification. The main finding from this paper is that the “digitally ordered” and “digitally delivered” aspects of the framework were able to be broadly applied. However, the significant material assumptions and the broad nature of the product classification at the aggregate level meant that our estimates were not of high quality. For the year ending March 2015, the estimate of the value of gross output of New Zealand that can be delivered digitally was 27.9 billion New Zealand dollars (NZ$) (US$18.8 billion), while for digitally ordered gross output, it was NZ$109.2 billion

This paper reveals that over the period 1985-2013, the wealthier states of India experienced a prevalence of the feedback hypothesis between real gross domestic product growth and petroleum consumption in the short run and the long run. Over the short term, the whole (major) 23 Indian state panels show support for the conservative hypothesis. Regarding the panels comprising low- and middle-income Indian states, although there appeared to be significant bidirectional effects in the long run, none of the results suggest that energy consumption increases economic growth. This implies that growth in energy demand can be controlled without harming economic growth. The results, however, indicate that for the low- and middle-income states, increases in petroleum consumption could adversely affect economic activity in the short and long run. These findings relate to the aggregate data on petroleum. Examining the short-run and long-run energy-growth linkages using disaggregated data on petroleum consumption reveals that only a few types of petroleum products have stable long-run relationships with economic growth. In fact, with disaggregated petroleum data, the vector error correction model (VECM) and cointegration results support the neutral hypothesis for high-incomes states. For the low- and middle-income groups, while the conservation effect is found to prevail in the short run and the long run, higher economic growth appears to reduce consumption of selected types of petroleum products.

The present paper shows the current trends in private sector investment in the water and sanitation sector. After peaking in 2007, private investment in the water and sanitation sector has been volatile. The decline in private investment has also been accompanied by a shift in the type and size of investments taking place. Post-2007, private investment is increasingly concentrated in a few large and wealthy countries and municipalities; and are bankrolled and developed by smaller, regional-based investors. This is especially worrying for low-income countries, which stand to benefit the most from private investment, but have been receiving less than 1 per cent of the total project allocations in the sector. The huge financing gap requires more innovative financing that can only come by attracting private sector capital to improve water and sanitation services in the Asia-Pacific region, especially for the least developed and low-income emerging economies.

A commonly held belief in the 1970s was that price indices rise because of temporary noise, and then revert after a short interval (Cecchetti and Moessner, 2008). Accordingly, policy should not respond to the inflation because of these volatile components of the price indices. This led to the development of the concept of core inflation (Gordon, 1975), which is headline inflation excluding food and fuel inflation. It was strongly believed that in the long run, headline inflation converges to core inflation and that there are no second round effects (that is an absence of core inflation converging to headline inflation). In recent years, however, major fluctuations in food inflation have occurred. This has become a major problem in developing countries, such as India, where a large portion of the consumption basket of the people are food items. Against this backdrop, in the present paper, an attempt is made to measure the second round effects stemming from food inflation in India using the measure of Granger causality in the frequency domain of Lemmens, Croux and Dekimpe (2008). The results of empirical analysis show significant causality running from headline inflation to core inflation in India and as a result, the prevalence of the second round effects. They also show that food inflation in India is not volatile, and that it feeds into the expected inflation of the households, causing the second round effects. This calls for the Reserve Bank of India to put greater effort in anchoring inflation expectations through effective communication and greater credibility.

The present paper is focused on using capital markets in the Asia-Pacific region to channel more resources for infrastructure development, while mobilizing assets managed by institutional investors, such as pension funds and insurance companies. To this end, the paper is structured as follows. First, an analysis of the level of capital market development in the region is conducted, which indicates that markets remain at a nascent stage in many economies. Banks continue to dominate private financing in the region. Second, a review is carried out on the size of institutional investors from which it is suggested that prudential regulation might need to be adjusted to enable greater infrastructure investment. Third, different modalities for investors seeking infrastructure exposure are highlighted and initiatives launched by different countries to support the development of infrastructure-related instruments are presented. Fourth, a review is made on the actions to support capital market development, which is critical for greater involvement of institutional investors. Fifth, ways to address constraints hindering infrastructure investments are presented. Finally, the paper concludes with proposals of strategies that are adapted to each country’s circumstances and designed to further tap this source of financing for infrastructure development.