Sanchita Basu Das – författare

The term ‘Middle-Income Trap’ refers to countries which stagnate economically after reaching a certain level of per capita income on the basis of labour- and capital-intensive growth, and are struggling to transition towards more skill-intensive and technology-driven development. It has resonance for the increasing number of countries in Asia who have either languished in middle-income status for extended periods of time, or are worried about growth slow-downs. This book sets outs the conceptual underpinnings of the Middle-Income Trap and explores the various ways it can be defined. It also focuses on the debate surrounding the Middle-Income Trap which questions the appropriate institutional and policy settings for middle-income countries to enable them to continue past the easy phase of economic growth. The book engages with this debate by investigating the role of institutions, human capital, and trade policy in helping countries increase their income levels and by highlighting factors which enable the shift to higher and qualitatively better growth. It questions how the large emerging economies in Asia such as China, Indonesia, and India are currently grappling with the challenges of transitioning from labour-intensive to technology- and knowledge-intensive production, and discusses what can be learnt from the countries that have been able to escape the trap to attain high-income status.Providing a conceptual framework for the Middle-Income Trap, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Economics, Comparative Economics and Asian Studies.

The term ‘Middle-Income Trap’ refers to countries which stagnate economically after reaching a certain level of per capita income on the basis of labour- and capital-intensive growth, and are struggling to transition towards more skill-intensive and technology-driven development. It has resonance for the increasing number of countries in Asia who have either languished in middle-income status for extended periods of time, or are worried about growth slow-downs. This book sets outs the conceptual underpinnings of the Middle-Income Trap and explores the various ways it can be defined. It also focuses on the debate surrounding the Middle-Income Trap which questions the appropriate institutional and policy settings for middle-income countries to enable them to continue past the easy phase of economic growth. The book engages with this debate by investigating the role of institutions, human capital, and trade policy in helping countries increase their income levels and by highlighting factors which enable the shift to higher and qualitatively better growth. It questions how the large emerging economies in Asia such as China, Indonesia, and India are currently grappling with the challenges of transitioning from labour-intensive to technology- and knowledge-intensive production, and discusses what can be learnt from the countries that have been able to escape the trap to attain high-income status.Providing a conceptual framework for the Middle-Income Trap, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Economics, Comparative Economics and Asian Studies.

ASEAN leaders proclaimed to create an ASEAN Economic Community by 2015. But achieving the target requires cooperation and coordination both within and among the ten ASEAN economies. Currently, with countries having varying considerations towards complete liberalisation, protectionism still persists in certain sectors of the economies. Lot of work needs to be done in addressing the domestic reforms, the gaps in infrastructure, the lack of human resources and adequate institutions. Moreover, it is the businesses whose decisions and actions will help the region to achieve an effective integration. The policymakers have vital roles to play in raising the engagement of the private businesses in ASEAN matters. As time is limited, one way for ASEAN is to focus on ""core"" elements of integration and implement them earnestly in the shortest possible time. The rest of the process, as envisaged in the AEC blueprint, can follow beyond 2015. This book examines the state of readiness of the member countries for regional integration and discusses the challenges to ASEAN businesses. It gives policy recommendations to address some of the issues faced by the key stakeholders.

During the 13th ASEAN Summit in November 2007, ASEAN Leaders endorsed the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint, which laid the foundation of creating a ""single market and production base"" among the ten Southeast Asian economies. Soon after that, ASEAN faced great uncertainties in the light of the 2008 global financial crisis and continues to remain cautious in the face of the ongoing global economic weakness. Despite this, the region is forging ahead with its commitment to carry out economic liberalisation and cooperation as stipulated in the AEC Blueprint. The official AEC scorecard, published in March 2012, stated that ASEAN had achieved 68.2 per cent of its targets for the 2008-11 period.The official AEC scorecard is expected to track the implementation of measures and the achievement of milestones committed in the AEC Strategic Schedule. However, the scorecard, in its current form, is too brief and general to be useful for the ASEAN citizens. This book attempts to fill this gap and evaluates the current status of and the progress towards the milestones of the AEC Blueprint. The overall message of the book is that even though ASEAN may miss some of its integration goals by 31 December 2015, it will certainly deliver some of the key initiatives - tariff elimination, establishing the ASEAN Single Window, laying the foundation of the regional investment initiative, advancing tourism services, moving ahead with ASEAN connectivity and the realisation of ASEAN 1 free trade agreements. AEC's goal of forming an equitable and competitive regional economy will continue to be a work in progress. AEC 2015 is going to be a historic milestone that will raise ASEAN's profile and will help the region to maintain its centrality in the international community.

Since 1957, Malaysia's economic development has been an account of growth, transformation, and of structural change. More than 75 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) comes from the manufacturing and services sectors. However, Malaysia is stuck in a middle-income trap and is facing challenges on the economic and political front. In June 2010, Prime Minister Najib Razak unveiled the 10th Malaysian Plan (2011-15) to chart the development of Malaysia from a middle- to high-income nation. This publication represents a policy-oriented stocktake and evaluation by academics, policy-makers, and business people on Malaysia's achievements, present work-in-progress endeavours, and some of the future challenges facing the nation in its pursuit to achieve a developed high-income country status.

This is an important and timely volume: important because ASEAN is an increasingly significant and influential regional and global actor; and timely because, as the 2015 ASEAN Economic Community target approaches, what is needed is a sympathetic yet arms-length survey of the issues and challenges. ASEAN will miss some of the targets laid out in its AEC Blueprint, but the reader is left in no doubt that the ASEAN spirit is alive and well. The editors include a distinguished former Secretary General of ASEAN and the leading academic analyst of ASEAN economic cooperation. They and their co-editors are to be congratulated for soliciting contributions from an outstanding and diverse group of authors, and then adding their highly authoritative commentary and analysis. A must read for anybody seriously interested in ASEAN.

The year 2015 has special significance for regional economic integration. The ASEAN Community, integrating the political, economic and social aspects of regional cooperation, will complete its first milestone by December 2015. Expectations of tangible benefits under an ASEAN Economic Community have attracted much attention though many of the initiatives will be realized post-2015.Following the policy of open regionalism, ASEAN has also signed free trade agreements with Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Japan and South Korea. It has launched negotiations for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement in 2013, with expected breakthrough by end-2015.The Southeast Asian economies are also involved in two other regional initiatives. First is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), initiated by the United States. As part of the U.S. ""pivot to Asia"", the TPP is envisioned as a ""comprehensive and high-quality"" agreement and has concluded its negotiation in October 2015. Second, the discussions on regional connectivity have broadened; China has emerged as a recent lead proponent with its proposals for ""One Belt, One Road"" and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.All these together have implications not only for individual Southeast Asian countries but also for regional trading architecture. To aid in understanding the beginnings, development, and potential of these grand plans, this collection of 22 essays offers a rich analysis of ASEAN's own economic integration and other related initiatives proliferating in the broader Asia-Pacific region

Asia has witnessed a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) since the turn of the millennium. The first regional agreement — the ASEAN FTA — was transformed into the ASEAN Economic Community at the end of 2015. In the meantime, ASEAN forged five ASEAN 1 FTAs and began to negotiate a sixteen-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement. In parallel, the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supporting U.S. foreign policy of ""Pivot to Asia"", was broadly agreed in October 2015. The RCEP and the TPP are accompanied by other mega-regional integration processes developing elsewhere in the world, including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership for the European Union and the United States, and the Pacific Alliance among four Latin American member states. Meanwhile, APEC is also striving to meet its Bogor Goal targets and create a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific.Each of these mega-regionals aims to achieve greater trade and investment liberalization and facilitation and more harmonized trade and investment rules so that all member economies can participate in the global value chain of production. Instead of undermining, these regional exercises can be building blocks for a more liberal global trading system supported by the World Trade Organization.This book ruminates on these regional agreements, their economic and strategic rationales and challenges during negotiations and afterwards. The book brings together eminent scholars and experts to deepen our understanding of the complex nature of the mega-regional trade agreements and their implications. It is useful both for the academic and research community and for policymakers who focus on trade and economic cooperation issues.

The ten Southeast Asian economies reached a milestone on 31 December 2015, when they announced the formation of an ASEAN Community. Although this includes three pillars – ASEAN Political-Security Community, ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and the ASEAN Socio?Cultural Community – it is the economic pillar that generates immense debate, due to its expected quantifiable benefits to member countries. This book, thus, focuses on the ASEAN Economic Community and seeks to explain the need for building domestic consensus within the member countries. It starts with an overview chapter describing the current achievements of the AEC. It then explores possible explanations for the achievements/non-achievements and offers a hypothesis on conflicting economic interests in a country as one possible explanation for gaps in implementation. This is because any form of economic liberalisation brings with it the winners and losers, thereby raising resistance to liberalization measures and slowing down the implementation process. The book includes six country chapters – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam ? that examine sources of domestic conflict/s in greater detail and depth. It also includes a regional chapter, co?authored by the ex-Secretary General of ASEAN, Mr Rodolfo Severino, that brings out the political nature of ASEAN economic cooperation since its inception in 1976. For ASEAN beyond 2015, the book articulates the need to obtain a strong domestic consensus that supports the integration initiatives of the AEC. This can be viewed as a way forward to accelerate and deepen integration within ASEAN. The book concludes with some suggestions on how each country can move towards achieving domestic consensus, based on the respective country level analysis.