Shinichi Ichimura - Böcker

East Asia's rapid economic growth and the crisis of 1997 have caught the world's attention. As the Asian miracle has turned to meltdown, the critical question has become whether growth will resume. Based on research and conferences at ICSEAD in Kitakyushu, Japan, this book brings together the work of Asian economic development experts. It considers the forces behind the East Asian growth miracle, the process of growth, the effect of saving, and the effect of foreign direct investment and multinationals. Taking an optimistic view, the authors conclude that rapid growth may resume in East Asia once the crisis has been resolved.The authors argue that a growth process links East Asian countries to each other and to the industrial world, and that growth reflects a process that combines capital formation and technical and institutional change. The 1997 crisis grew out of excessively rapid boom and must be handled before growth will resume. But, the authors conclude, once the crisis has been resolved, the linked process of growth supported by appropriate policies, high levels of savings and investment, and foreign investment will allow growth to resume, although perhaps with a different geographic center of gravity.

This is the first outcome of our effort in ASIAN LINK PROJECT to construct the econometric models of Asian developing countries and analyze their inter-dependence with major trading partners, the United States and Japan. The model we present here is called Asian Link System. The countries in this system include Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and the United States. They are covered by national models. The rest of the world is divided into several regions and treated by simple proto-type models. The main characteristics of Asian Link System are to deal with the inter-dependent relations between Asian developing countries on the one hand and Japan and United States on the other hand. Here are presented these national models and the Asian Link System with the underlying statistical data, so that any econometrician can re-estimate our models and check the results of our research work. Nowadays most articles and books in econometrics report only the final results or conclusions of research so that no other econometrician can re-calculate or re­ examine the findings. This is very serious in the empirical research, because as theorists may make mistakes, positive economists do commit errors or miss some possible considerations. Unless statiscal data are offered, other econometricians cannot make suggestions or improve the models. This is the main reason why empirical research in econometrics or applied econometrics are not making substantial progress in recent years.

This book is a sequel to our first report of ASIAN LINK PROJECT in 1985: Econometric Models of Asian LINK, Springer-Verlag, Tokyo - Berlin - New York. Now the scope is expanded to Asian-Pacific Countries in coverage, so that this monograph presents the econometric models of Japan, the United States, Canada, China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singa­ pore, Indonesia, Australia and the European Community. We are particularly happy to have included the excellent models of Australia and Canada whose economies are essential parts of the Asian-Pacific Economic Community. Most of those models were presented at the Workshop of Asian Link Project held in Bandung, Indonesia at the time of the Second Convention of the East Asian Eco­ nomic Association, 1990. Those models have been up-dated since then, and several other important models were added. Unlike our previous book, we have not tried here to link these national models as a regional or global model in any way, ex­ cept for the model by S. Kinoshita which offers a regional linkage for Pacific-basin economies by linking the US, Japan, Canada, the European Community coun­ tries as a group, Asian NIEs (Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan), ASEAN (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore) and East Asian economies. As we argued in our previous publication, we tried to publish these econometric models again with the statistical data as much as we could, so as to enable the reader examine the estimation and performance of the models by himself.

This book deals with the major problems that Japan and East Asian countries have faced during the turbulent years of their reconstruction and development from 1945 to the present time. The Development Report of the World Bank 1993 on the same subject was given the subtitle East Asian Miracle. I have never thought, however, that the impressive achievement of East Asian development was a miracle in any sense. Indeed, as this book tries to show, Japanese and Asian development has been the fruit of the sweat, tears, and blood of all East Asian nations. The efforts and sacrifices involved in the process of their development after World War II are no less than those during the war itself. One should not overlook the fact that almost all the peoples of East Asia have achieved not just economic development but indeed new nation-building after hundreds of years of coloni­ al submission. It is my assertion in this book that even economists' analyses of Asian development should pay attention to not only the logos but also the pathos of develop­ ment in this last half of twentieth century. Ever since I became the director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University in 1969, I have written extensively in English as well as in Japanese on the various problems arising in the Japanese and other Asian economies.

This is the very first book to offer seven substantial econometric models of the Chinese economy with the statistical data used, so that the reader will be able to reproduce them all and test them for any policy alternatives.The book presents up-to-date models produced both inside and outside China, so that readers can understand most of the advanced studies of the Chinese economy by Chinese experts at the present time. This is an invaluable reference for graduate students and scholars working on Chinese economic problems.

This book presents pioneering work on an interregional input-output table of the Chinese economy and its applications to the analysis of interregional and interindustrial relations in China. It is the fruit of the authors' joint efforts of more than five years to establish a solid basis for the analysis of interregional relations in China, in the hope of laying the foundation for further studies of regional development in that country.The book endeavors to make a contribution to the regional typology of the Chinese economy. The Chinese provinces are classified into seven large regions. The interregional input-output table is constructed accordingly.Chapter I describes the methodology for producing this interregional input-output (IRIO) table. Chapter II presents the (IRIO) table after a brief explanation of the Chinese statistical data needed for the compilation of the table. Chapter III explains the basis of seven large regions adopted for the IRIO table. Chapter IV deals with the interdependence of regions and the effects of the changes in some parameters of one region on the activities in other regions. Chapter V, the last chapter, applies the IRIO table to policy analysis.

This book explores the important topic of fiscal decentralization in Asian countries, and focuses on how government finance and administration are being reformed to bring budgetary decisions closer to voters. The focus on Asia is especially important because all countries in this region have been undergoing serious fiscal reforms in the past decade. They include one of the biggest decentralization reforms in Indonesia, significant reforms in democratic Philippines and Vietnam which are in transition, and Japan, whose fiscal reconstruction program is covered extensively. India and China, which are also covered, are very special cases because of their size and because their policies must fit decentralization into a significant economic growth scenario.

This book offers the representative macroeconometric models and their applications for the Japanese economy in different development stages throughout the postwar years up to the present. It presents a summary of three types of macroeconometric models and analyses:As many Asian economies are going through the stages of development that Japan has experienced over the past few decades, this book will be extremely relevant to them and other developing countries as a reference for years to come.

This book presents Professor Lawrence R Klein and his group's last quarterly econometric model of the United States economy that they had produced at the University of Pennsylvania. This is the last econometric model that Lawrence Klein and his disciples have left after some 50 years of cumulated efforts of constructing the US economy model up to around 2000. It was widely known as the WEFA Econometric Model Mark 10, and is the culmination of Professor Klein's research which spans more than 70 years, and would please not only Professor Klein's old students and colleagues, but also younger students who have heard so much of Klein models but have yet to see the latest model in its complete and printed form.