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502. Financial Development, Growth, and Regional Disparity in Post-Reform China
- Author:
- Zhicheng Liang
- Publication Date:
- 08-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Deepening financial development and rapid economic growth in China have been accompanied by widening income disparity between the coastal and inland regions. In this paper, by employing panel dataset for 29 Chinese provinces over the period of 1990-2001 and applying the generalized method of moment (GMM) techniques, we examine the impacts of financial development on China's growth performance. Our empirical results show that financial development significantly promotes economic growth in coastal regions but not in the inland regions; the weak finance-growth nexus in inland provinces may aggravate China's regional disparities.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Development, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
503. Spatial Convergence in China: 1952-99
- Author:
- Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, Dong Guo, and Patricio Aroca
- Publication Date:
- 08-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- The purpose of this paper is to examine the convergence process in China by taking into account the spatial interaction between factors. The paper shows that there has been a dramatic increase in the spatial dependence of China's per capita GDP in the last 20 years. The consequence of space plays an important role, which is reflected in the influence of a neighbour's condition on the mobility of a province's income distribution from one category to another. The dynamics of the process showed evidence that China's distribution has gone from one of convergence to stratification, and from stratification to polarization.
- Topic:
- Demographics, Development, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
504. Financial Sector Development and Growth: The Chinese Experience
- Author:
- Mingming Zhou and Iftekhar Hasan
- Publication Date:
- 08-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper documents the financial and institutional developments of China during the past two decades, when China was successfully transformed from a rigid centralplanning economy to a dynamic market economy following its unique path. We empirically examine the relationship between financial development and economic growth in China by employing a panel sample covering 31 Chinese provinces during the important transition period 1986-2002. Our evidence suggests that the development of financial markets, institutions, and instruments have been robustly associated with economic growth in China.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
505. Primary Education in India: Prospects of Meeting the MDG Target
- Author:
- Bernarda Zamora and Sonia Bhalotra
- Publication Date:
- 07-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper uses two large repeated cross-sections, one for the early 1990s, and one for the late 1990s, to describe growth in school enrolment and completion rates for boys and girls in India, and to explore the extent to which enrolment and completion rates have grown over time. It decomposes this growth into a component due to changes in the characteristics that determine schooling, and another associated with changes in the responsiveness of schooling to given characteristics. Our results caution against the common practice of using current data to make future projections on the assumption that the model parameters are stable. The analysis nevertheless performs illustrative simulations relevant to the question of whether India will be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of realising universal primary education by the year 2015. The simulations suggest that India will achieve universal attendance, but that primary school completion rates will not exhibit much progress.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, and Education
- Political Geography:
- India and Asia
506. Reconstruction from Breakdown in Northeastern India: Building State Capability
- Author:
- M. Sajjad Hassan
- Publication Date:
- 07-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- The northeast region of India remains fraught with severe violence, poor growth and acute frustration among its youth. Success of policies to resolve the region's crisis has proved less than encouraging. What could be the way out of the violence–poor growth trap? This paper argues that a key determinant of the instability in the region is the absence of the effective role of the state: to provide security and opportunities for social and economic wellbeing equitably to all sections of society; and to uphold the rule of law. For reconstruction to work the state must act to provide key political goods to all its citizens, and restore its legitimate authority by implementing policies and enforcing laws cleanly and transparently. Political leaders can contribute to this endeavour by organizing politics inclusively.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Development, and Government
- Political Geography:
- India and Asia
507. Rethinking Import-substituting Industrialization: Development Strategies and Institutions in Taiwan and China
- Author:
- Tianbiao Zhu
- Publication Date:
- 07-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Conventional explanations of Taiwan and China's economic success point to the shift from an import-substituting industrialization (ISI) strategy to an export-oriented industrialization (EOI) strategy. This paper argues that the development strategies in Taiwan and China have always been a combination of ISI and EOI strategies during their entire miracle-creating period; far from the shift from ISI to EOI strategies, export promotion was used in both cases to sustain ISI, which has always been the central focus of development. Behind this strategy there is a set of institutions in both Taiwan and China, which has played a key role in supporting ISI, in particular, the government, the bank sector, public enterprises, and their relationship.
- Topic:
- Development and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- China, Israel, Taiwan, East Asia, and Asia
508. Food Security in Vietnam during the 1990s: The Empirical Evidence
- Author:
- Vasco Molini
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Analysing the performance of ten developing countries, Hoddinot and Yohannes (2002) find a strong association between two measures of food security (calorie intake and mostly dietary diversity) and the increase in expenditures per capita. Using various indicators of food security, we describe the changes in food balances in Vietnam and find evidence of a substitution of poor micronutrients items (rice and cereals) with rich ones like fruit, vegetables fish and meat. Poor households, while increasing the amount of calories consumed, still lack vitamins, iron, calcium, etc. A preliminary assessment of the food security variation showed that improvements were, as expected, more concentrated among the richer Vietnamese households than the poor ones, although there was some improvement among poorer strata as well. We also focus on the calorie/expenditure elasticity and compare results for the years 1993 and 1998. Our findings confirm that this link is strong, and show that calorie income elasticity changed in the expected direction. We conclude that in general food security improved in Vietnam during 1990s although considerable differences still remain among expenditure deciles and among regions due to the accentuated spatial difference.
- Topic:
- Security, Development, and Human Welfare
- Political Geography:
- Asia and Vietnam
509. Development of Financial Intermediation and the Dynamics of Rural-Urban Inequality: China, 1978-98
- Author:
- Qi Zhang, Mingxing Liu, and Yiu Por Chen
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Using China as a test case, this paper empirically investigates how the development of financial intermediation affects rural-urban income disparity (RUID). Using 20-year province level panel data, we find that the level of financial development is positively correlated with RUID. Examining two subperiods, 1978-88 and 1989-98, we test several competing hypotheses that may affect RUID. We find that the increase of RUID may be explained by fiscal policy during the first period and financial intermediates during the second period. In addition, we show that the direction of the Kuznets effect on RUID is sensitive to changes in government development policies. The rural development policies during the first period may have enhanced the rural development and reduced RUID. However, the financial intermediary policy during the second period focused on urban development and increased both urban growth and intra-urban inequalities, thus leading to an increase in RUID. Finally, we show that RUID is insensitive to the provincial industrial structure (the share of primary industry in GDP). These results are consistent with the traditional urban-bias hypothesis and are robust to the inclusion of controls for endogeneity issues. This study adds to the economic inequality literature by clarifying the effects of government policies on the underlying dynamics on convergent and divergent effects on rural-urban inequality.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Government
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
510. How Should We Measure Global Poverty in a Changing World?
- Author:
- Kuan Xu and Lars Osberg
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Before effective anti-poverty policy can be designed and implemented, the extent, trend and distribution of poverty must be identified. In this sense, poverty measurement is a crucial intermediate step in public policymaking and development planning. This paper asks whether the estimated proportion of the world's population with income below US$1 (adjusted according to purchasing power parity) per day is a good measure of trends in global poverty. We argue that the answer depends on two important issues in the measurement of poverty—the definition of the poverty line, and how best to summarize the level of poverty In this paper, we survey the literature on poverty measurement, demonstrate the importance of considering poverty incidence, depth and inequality jointly, present a simple but powerful graphical representation of the Sen and SST indices of poverty intensity (the poverty box) which is the FGT index of order 1 and extend our empirical work to China using the commonly accepted international poverty line definition of one half median equivalent income.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia