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341. A New Horizon for the Korea-India Strategic and Sustainable Partnership under Korea's New Southern Policy

Author:
Choong Yong Ahn
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
India and South Korea, Asia’s third- and fourth-largest economies, respectively, established a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) in 2010 and upgraded their relationship to a special strategic partnership in 2015. South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s “New Southern” policy and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Act East” policy share important objectives and values through which Korea and India can maximize their potential to pursue high tech-oriented, win-win growth. Both countries face the great challenge of diversifying their economic partners in their respective geo-economic domains amid newly emerging international geo-economic dynamics as well as rapidly changing Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies. Given the two countries’ excessive dependence on the Chinese market and potential risks and uncertainties involved in the U.S.-China trade war and related security conflicts, South Korea and India need to deepen bilateral linkages in trade, investment, and cultural contacts. South Korea-India cooperation is crucial in promoting plurilateralism, prosperity, and harmony in East Asia. This paper suggests a specific action agenda to fulfill mutual commitments as entailed in the “Special Strategic Partnership” between these two like-minded countries of South Korea and India.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Science and Technology, Bilateral Relations, and Industry
Political Geography:
United States, China, South Asia, India, Asia, South Korea, and Korea

342. Framing an Indo-Pacific Narrative in India-South Korea Ties

Author:
Jagannath P. Panda
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
Abstract:
Both India’s and South Korea’s strategic choices are deeply influenced by the rapidly evolving Indo-Pacific construct, particularly amid a mounting U.S.-China rivalry. With India’s “Look/Act East” policy and South Korea’s “New Southern Policy” offering a perfect stage for deepened mutual cooperation, both nations need to further their relations to build Asia’s future while advancing their respective national interests. With both countries following stringent foreign policies as a result of the actions of their immediate neighbors, they present a geopolitically strategic complementarity for their relationship to prosper and emerge as one of the most important relationships in the region. Seoul’s hesitation to overtly embrace the “Indo-Pacific” concept is not really a barrier; rather a geo-political overture to discard the balance of power politics and pursue an autonomous foreign policy. India’s preference for the “Indo-Pacific” is equally based on strategic autonomy, imbibing universal values and an inclusive regional order. Both countries emphasize a free and rules-based Indo-Pacific and have immense potential to establish security and connectivity partnerships as the keystone of their bilateral ties. With India and South Korea understanding the economic importance versus security ramifications of China, and with Japan’s reemergence as a key regional, if not global actor, both countries need to bring serious strategic intent to their relationship. Making use of the ASEAN platform and bilateral dialogues, South Korea and India have the potential to become one of the strongest Indo-Pacific partners of the 21st century
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, Partnerships, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
China, South Asia, India, Asia, South Korea, Korea, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific

343. The Impact of the EAEU-Iran Preferential Trade Agreement

Author:
Amat Adarov and Mahdi Ghodsi
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
The preferential trade agreement between the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and Iran on mutual trade entered into force in October 2019. In this report we estimate its expected impact at aggregate and sectoral levels using the gravity model of trade based on the global sample of bilateral trade flows at the HS 6-digit level. The analysis suggests that the implementation of the agreement will boost mutual trade for both trading partners, with relatively greater gains expected for the EAEU’s exports to Iran. On aggregate, the total gains in mutual trade are estimated to reach almost USD 46 million, with exports from the EAEU to Iran expected to increase by 9.7%, compared with a rise in exports from Iran to the EAEU of up to 4%. The difference in the impact will also be significant across the five EAEU countries as well as across sectors, with the major export gains expected to accrue in the chemicals and agri-food sectors, especially trade in miscellaneous fruits and vegetables, as well as in the textile, polymer production and metals sectors.
Topic:
Economics, Treaties and Agreements, Global Political Economy, Exports, and Trade
Political Geography:
Iran, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Belarus

344. New Productivity Drivers: Revisiting the Role of Digital Capital, FDI and Integration at Aggregate and Sectoral Levels

Author:
Amat Adarov and Robert Stehrer
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
The paper studies the drivers of productivity at country and sectoral levels over the period 2000-2017 with the focus on the impact of capital accumulation and structure. The analysis confirms an especially important role of ICT and intangible digital capital for productivity growth, particularly in the manufacturing sectors. While backward global value chain participation and EU integration are also found to be instrumental for accelerating productivity growth, the impact of inward foreign direct investment is not robustly detected when the data is purged from the effects of special purpose entities and outlier countries.
Topic:
Economics, Foreign Direct Investment, European Union, Digital Economy, Capital Flows, and Trade
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus

345. Robotisation, Employment and Industrial Growth Intertwined Across Global Value Chains

Author:
Mahdi Ghodsi, Oliver Reiter, Robert Stehrer, and Roman Stöllinger
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
The global economy is currently experiencing a new wave of technological change involving new technologies, especially in the realm of artificial intelligence and robotics, but not limited to it. One key concern in this context is the consequences of these new technologies on the labour market. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the direct and indirect effects of the rise of industrial robots and productivity via international value chains on various industrial indicators, including employment and real value added. The paper thereby adds to the existing empirical work on the relationship between technological change, employment and industrial growth by adding data on industrial robots while controlling for other technological advancements measured by total factor productivity (TFP). The results indicate that the overall impact of the installation of new robots did not statistically affect the growth of industrial employment during the period 2000–2014 significantly, while the overall impact on the real value added growth of industries in the world was positive and significant. The methodology also allows for a differentiation between the impact of robots across various industries and countries based on two different perspectives of source and destination industries across global value chains.
Topic:
Economics, Science and Technology, Digital Economy, Economic growth, Industry, and Robotics
Political Geography:
Global Focus

346. Does Employment Protection Affect Unemployment? A Meta-analysis

Author:
Philipp Heimberger
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
Despite extensive research efforts, the magnitude of the effect of employment protection legislation (EPL) on unemployment remains unclear. Existing econometric estimates exhibit substantial variation, and it is therefore difficult to draw valid conclusions. This paper applies meta-analysis and meta-regression methods to a unique data set consisting of 881 observations on the effect of EPL on unemployment from 75 studies. Once we control for publication selection bias, we cannot reject the hypothesis that the average effect of EPL on unemployment is zero. The meta-regression analysis, which investigates sources of heterogeneity in the reported effect sizes, reveals the following main results. First, the choice of the EPL variable matters: estimates that build on survey-based EPL variables report a significantly stronger unemployment-increasing impact of EPL than estimates developed using EPL indices based on the OECD’s methodology, where the latter relies on coding information from legal provisions. Second, we find that employment protection has a small unemployment-increasing effect on female unemployment, compared with a zero impact on total unemployment. Third, using multi-year averages of the underlying data tends to dampen the unemployment effects of EPL. Fourth, product market regulation is found to moderate the effect of EPL on unemployment.
Topic:
Labor Issues, European Union, Employment, Unemployment, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus

347. Distributional National Accounts (DINA) for Austria, 2004-2016

Author:
Stefan Jestl and Emanuel List
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper constructs distributional national accounts for Austria for the period 2004-2016. We enrich survey data with tabulated tax data and make it fully consistent with national accounts data. The comprehensive dataset allows us to analyse the distribution of macroeconomic growth across the income distribution and to explore the evolution of income inequality in pre-tax income over time. Our results suggest that the distribution of growth has changed over time, which had considerable repercussions on inequality. Inequality started to decline at the very beginning of the economic and financial crisis in 2007, however it has increased again after 2012. We further provide novel insights into the evolution of capital income for top income groups and explore redistribution mechanisms that operated in Austria. Government spending was found to play a key role for redistributive effects across the income distribution. In particular, the transfer system redistributes pre-tax income to a large extent.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, and Economic Inequality
Political Geography:
Europe and Austria

348. Immigration and Offshoring: Two Forces of Globalisation and Their Impact on Employment and the Bargaining Power of Occupational Groups

Author:
Michael Landesmann and Sandra Leitner
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper estimates conditional demand models and, using a joint approach for the period 2008-2017, examines the impact of immigration and different measures of offshoring on the labour demand and demand elasticities of native workers in four different types of occupational groups: managers/professionals, clerical workers, craft (skilled) workers and manual workers. The analysis is conducted using data for four EU economies: Austria, Belgium, France and Spain. Our results point to important and occupation-specific direct and indirect effects of immigration and offshoring. Both offshoring – particularly services offshoring – and immigration have negative direct employment effects on all occupations, but native clerks and manual workers are affected the most, and native managers/professionals the least. Generally, offshoring exerts a stronger direct negative employment effect than does immigration. Our results also identify an important (labour demand) elasticity-channel of immigration and offshoring and show that some groups of native workers can also actually gain from globalisation through an improvement in their wage-bargaining position. Overall, our results indicate a deterioration in the bargaining power of native manual workers arising from both immigration and offshoring; an improvement in the bargaining position of native craft workers in the case of both immigration and offshoring; and an improvement in the bargaining position of native clerical workers and managers/professionals in the case of offshoring only. Finally, our analysis of the cross-effects of immigration highlights the important role of migrant managers/professionals for the labour demand and demand elasticities (bargaining power) of native clerical workers, craft and manual workers.
Topic:
Globalization, Labor Issues, Immigration, Employment, and Work Culture
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Belgium, Spain, and Austria

349. Tracking and Assessing Governance and Management Reform in the Nuclear Security Enterprise

Author:
Jill Dahlburg and Robert Shea
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The National Academy of Public Administration
Abstract:
The Act directs NNSA’s Administrator to enter into an agreement with the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and the National Academy of Public Administration to create an Implementation Assessment Panel to: Provide guidance to the Secretary and Administrator on the implementation plan content; Track implementation plan progress; and Assess implementation plan effectiveness. NAPA and NAS have formed a joint Implementation Assessment Panel. The Panel will oversee the work of the joint NAPA/NAS study team, providing strategic guidance on study approach and focus, and issuing key findings and recommendations. The 14 Panel members bring a wealth of experience from DOE Science Laboratories, Federally Funded Research & Development Centers, the Intelligence Community, Academia, and the Office of Management and Budget.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, National Security, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

350. The Syrian Safe Zone and International Law

Author:
Bríd Ní Ghráinne
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institute of International Relations Prague
Abstract:
On Wednesday 9 October 2019, Turkey launched a cross-border operation in Northern Syria. Turkey justified its actions as a response to an ‘imminent terrorist threat’ from Kurdish-led forces. Its operation was directed at pushing back these groups from its border and creating a ‘safe zone’ in Syria where up to two million Syrian refugees can be resettled. This reflection aims to assess whether the Turkish operation to establish the safe zone was lawful; and whether the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the safe zone is in conformity with international law.
Topic:
Human Rights, International Law, Refugees, Syrian War, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, and Syria