Asia and Pacific > India

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 207 items for :

  • Type: Journal Issue x
  • Trade: General x
Clear All Modify Search
Corinne C Delechat
,
Giovanni Melina
,
Monique Newiak
,
Chris Papageorgiou
,
Ke Wang
, and
Nikola Spatafora
This paper examines the significance and impact of broad-based and industrial policies on economic diversification in developing economies, supported by a literature reviews, case studies, and IMF analyses. Economic diversification entails shifting from traditional sectors, like agriculture and mining, to a variety of high-quality services and sectors. This transition is crucial for adapting to global market fluctuations and promoting sustainable growth and improved living standards. A literature review, including many IMF contributions, reveals a strong correlation between economic diversification and improved macroeconomic performance in developing countries, such as faster economic growth and higher incomes per capita. Factors influencing economic diversification include macroeconomic stability, infrastructure quality, workforce skills, credit access, regulatory environment, and income equality. Six case studies highlight the experiences of Costa Rica, Gabon, Georgia, India, Senegal, and Vietnam, demonstrating that successful diversification strategies require a long-term commitment and effective broad-based policies. Industrial policies can support diversification by addressing market failures, but they must be well-designed and effectively implemented. Common lessons include the necessity of maintaining macroeconomic stability, investing in human capital, and fostering competition. Sector-specific mechanisms like Special Economic Zones should be used cautiously, emphasizing underlying bottlenecks and minimizing fiscal costs. Country-specific insights include Costa Rica's strategic policy shift towards export orientation, Gabon's reduced dependence on oil, Georgia's market-friendly policies, India's skilled labor and software clusters, Senegal's infrastructure and business environment improvements, and Vietnam's transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy. The IMF's engagement in diversification emphasizes improving human capital, infrastructure, reducing trade barriers, and promoting international trade integration. Policymakers, researchers, and international organizations increasingly recognize the importance of economic diversification for resilient, sustainable, and inclusive growth, requiring nuanced policy interventions tailored to each country's context and capabilities.
Diego A. Cerdeiro
,
Parisa Kamali
,
Siddharth Kothari
, and
Dirk V Muir
This paper estimates the costs of ‘de-risking’ scenarios between China and OECD members at the aggregate and sectoral levels. Aggregate large-scale de-risking – reshoring by increasing reliance on domestic production and friend-shoring by reducing imports from specific foreign countries – is quantified with the IMF’s GIMF model, suggesting significant permanent effects on the global economy. Returning integration to 2000 levels translates into long-term global GDP losses of 4.5 percent under reshoring and as much as 1.8 percent under friend-shoring. Friend-shoring does not necessarily deliver a boon to third countries as trade diversion benefits might be largely offset by contractions in China and OECD members. Sectoral de-risking, where all trade between rivals is eliminated in specific products, is quantified through empirical estimation of the scope for quality downgrading. The results demonstrate the potential for significant losses in input quality should there be an escalation in export bans. Losses are asymmetric against China in the specific case of semiconductors but can be significant for both sides in other sectors—including in critical areas such as environmental goods.
Reda Cherif
and
Fuad Hasanov
Industrial policies pursued in many developing countries in the 1950s-1970s largely failed while the industrial policies of the Asian Miracles succeeded. We argue that a key factor of success is industrial policy with export orientation in contrast to import substitution. Exporting encouraged competition, economies of scale, innovation, and local integration and provided market signals to policymakers. Even in a large market such as India, import substitution policies in the automotive industry failed because of micromanagement and misaligned incentives. We also analyze the risk tradeoffs involved in various industrial policy strategies and their implications on the 21st century industrial policies. While state interventions may be needed to develop some new capabilities and industries, trade protectionism is neither a necessary nor a sufficient tool and will most likely be counterproductive.
Vu Chau
,
Marina Conesa Martinez
,
Taehoon Kim
, and
John A Spray
We study the inflationary impacts of pandemic lockdown shocks and fiscal and monetary stimulus during 2020-2022 using a novel harmonized dataset of sectoral producer price inflation and input-output linkages for more than 1000 sectors in 53 countries. The inflationary impact of shocks is identified via a Bartik shift-share design, where shares reflect the heterogeneous sectoral exposure to shocks and are derived from a macroeconomic model of international production network. We find that pandemic lockdowns, and subsequent reopening policies, were the most dominant driver of global inflation in this period, especially through their impact on aggregate demand. We provide a decomposition of lockdown shock by sources, and find that between 20-30 percent of the demand effect of lockdown/reopening is due to spillover from abroad. Finally, while fiscal and monetary policies played an important role in preventing deflation in 2020, their effects diminished in the recovery years.

Abstract

South Asia’s Path to Resilient Growth highlights the remarkable development progress in South Asia and how the region can advance in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Steps include a renewed push toward greater trade and financial openness, while responding proactively to the distributional impact and dislocation associated with this structural transformation. Promoting a green and digital recovery remains important. The book explores ways to accelerate the income convergence process in the region, leveraging on the still-large potential demographic dividend in most of the countries. These include greater economic diversification and export sophistication, trade and foreign direct investment liberalization and participation in global value chains amid shifting regional and global conditions, financial development, and investment in human capital.

Mariya Brussevich
,
Shihui Liu
, and
Mr. Chris Papageorgiou
The paper extends the work of Deaton (2021) by exploring the period of post-crisis recovery in 2021-2024. The paper documents per-capita income divergence during the period of post-shock recovery, with countries at the bottom of the income distribution falling significantly behind. Findings suggest that higher COVID-19 vaccination rates and targeted virus containment measures are associated with faster recovery in per-capita incomes in the medium term. Evidence on the effectiveness of economic support policies for reducing cross-country income inequality, including fiscal and monetary policies, is mixed especially in the case of developing countries.
Maria Borga
,
Achille Pegoue
,
Mr. Gregory M Legoff
,
Alberto Sanchez Rodelgo
,
Dmitrii Entaltsev
, and
Kenneth Egesa
This paper presents estimates of the carbon emissions of FDI from capital formation funded by FDI and the production of foreign-controlled firms. The carbon intensity of capital formation financed by FDI has trended down, driven by reductions in the carbon intensity of electricity generation. Carbon emissions from the operations of foreign-controlled firms are greater than those from their capital formation. High emission intensities were accompanied by high export intensities in mining, transport, and manufacturing. Home country policies to incentivize firms to meet strict emissions standards in both their domestic and foreign operations could be important to reducing emissions globally.
Ian W.H. Parry
,
Mr. Peter Dohlman
,
Mr. Cory Hillier
,
Mr. Martin D Kaufman
,
Florian Misch
,
Mr. James Roaf
,
Mr. Christophe J Waerzeggers
, and
Miss Kyung Kwak
This Climate Note discusses the rationale, design, and impacts of border carbon adjustments (BCAs), charges on embodied carbon in imports potentially matched by rebates for embodied carbon in exports. Large disparities in carbon pricing between countries is raising concerns about competitiveness and emissions leakage, and BCAs are a potentially effective instrument for addressing such concerns. Design details are critical, however. For example, limiting coverage of the BCA to energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries facilitates administration, and initially benchmarking BCAs on domestic emissions intensities would help ease the transition for emissions-intensive trading partners. It is also important to consider how to apply BCAs across countries with different approaches to emissions mitigation. BCAs are challenging because they pose legal risks and may be at odds with the differentiated responsibilities of developing countries. Furthermore, BCAs provide only modest incentives for other large emitting countries to scale carbon pricing—an international carbon price floor would be far more effective in this regard.