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Asia and Pacific > Thailand

You are looking at 1 - 7 of 7 items for :

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  • Employment; Economic theory x
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Cover IMF Working Papers
Socio-Economic Spillovers from Special Economic Zones: Evidence from Cambodia
Mariya Brussevich
This study examines the socio-economic impact of special economic zones (SEZs) in Cambodia---a prominent place-based policy established in 2005. The paper employs a database on existing and future SEZs in Cambodia with matched household surveys at the district level and documents stylized facts on SEZs in a low-income country setting. To identify causal effects of the SEZ program, the paper (i) constructs an alternative control group including future SEZ program participants and districts adjacent to SEZ hosts; and (ii) employs a propensity score weighting technique. The study finds that entry of SEZs disproportionately benefits female workers and leads to a decline of income inequality at a district level. However, the findings also suggest that land values in SEZ districts tend to rise while wage levels remain largely unchanged relative to other districts. In addition, the paper tests for socio-economic spillovers to surrounding areas and for agglomeration effects associated with clusters of multiple SEZs.
Keywords:
WP; SEZ program; SEZ entry; SEZ firm; program participation; SEZ district; SEZ location; Employment; Wages; Income; Income inequality; Labor markets; Special Economic Zones; Place-Based Policy; Low-Income Country; Foreign Direct Investment; SEZ effect; SEZ developer; SEZ trend; tagged SEZ database; SEZ program participation; SEZ intensity; propensity score weighting technique; Policy implication; impact of special economic zones; Women
Cover IMF Working Papers
Structural Transformation — How Does Thailand Compare?
Mr. Vladimir Klyuev
Thailand stands out in international comparison as a country with a high dispersion of productivity across sectors. It has especially low labor productivity in agriculture—a sector that employs a much larger share of the population than is typical for a country at Thailand’s level of income. This suggests large potential productivity gains from labor reallocation across sectors, but that process—which made a significant contribution to Thailand’s growth in the past—appears to have stalled lately. This paper establishes these facts and applies a simple model to discuss possible explanations. The reasons include a gap between the skills possessed by rural workers and those required in the modern sectors; the government’s price support programs for several agricultural commodities, particularly rice; and the uniform minimum wage. At the same time, agriculture plays a useful social and economic role as the employer of last resort. The paper makes a number of policy recommendations aimed at facilitating structural transformation in the Thai economy.
Keywords:
WP; productivity difference; low-productivity agriculture; high-productivity sector; price support; productivity differential; productivity growth; structural transformation; industrialization; agricultural price support; standard of living; Thailand's productivity gap; low-productivity activity; productivity increase; higher-productivity sector; differentials in Thailand; Agricultural sector; Productivity; Employment; Labor productivity; Global
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Philippines: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
This Selected Issues paper discusses reasons behind rise of inflation in Philippines. The paper focuses on inflation developments and the monetary policy framework in the Philippines. It employs a global latent factor model to decompose inflation into common drivers and idiosyncratic factors for a sample of 62 countries. Based on these results, it then models inflation in different regions and presents the single country, single equation model and conducts out of sample forecasts to determine consistency with the medium-term inflation target. The common factors modeling of inflation suggests that inflation in the Philippines depends on world commodity price developments and movements in the US dollar effective exchange rate. However, theory suggests that domestic cyclical conditions also matter. We assess the importance of these variables by estimating a Phillips curve augmented by world commodity prices and the nominal exchange rate for 2000–2013. Using the Akaike-Schwartz criterion, the optimal lag length is found to be four. Given the potential for serial correlation and heteroskedasticity, we use the Newey-West standard errors to find the consistent estimates.
Keywords:
ISCR; CR; Philippines; bank; enterprise; thrift bank; bank penetration; enterprise survey; employment growth; microfinance loan; funding cost; Inflation; Employment; Unemployment; Labor force; Credit; Global; Asia and Pacific; Middle East; North Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; East Africa
Cover IMF Working Papers
Informal Labour and Credit Markets: A Survey
Mr. Paul L Levine
,
Emanuela Lotti
,
Nicoletta Batini
, and
Young-Bae Kim
This paper reviews the literature on the informal economy, focusing first on empirical findings and then on existing approaches to modeling informality within both partial and general equilibrium environments. We concentrate on labour and credit markets, since these tend to be most affected by informality. The phenomenon is particularly important in emerging and other developing economies, given their high degrees of informal labour and financial services and the implications these have for the effectiveness of macroeconomic policy. We emphasize the need for dynamic general equilibrium (DGE) and ultimately dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models for a full understanding of the costs, benefits and policy implications of informality. The survey shows that the literature on informality is quite patchy, and that there are several unexplored areas left for research.
Keywords:
WP; informal credit markets; credit market friction; adverse selection; credit market imperfection; credit rationing
Cover IMF Working Papers
What Drives Household Borrowing and Credit Constraints? Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina
Miss Mali Chivakul
Although Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has experienced rapid growth in credit to households in recent years, most individuals are still credit constrained. This paper analyzes the determinants of household credit demand and credit constraints in BiH. To our knowledge, it is the first study on this topic employing household survey data (2001 and 2004) from Emerging Europe. Our results highlight the impact of the post-conflict and transitional nature of the country on the behavior of borrowers and lenders. As expected, age, income, wealth and education qualifications are the main factors driving credit market participation, while high income and high wealth lower credit constraints. In BiH, the probability of credit market participation peaks at 45 years old, considerably higher than in the advanced countries. At the same time, older individuals are significantly more constrained than their peers in the advanced countries. The results imply that the current credit boom may largely reflect the overall post-war demand, and indicate the worse-off position of the older generation in transition economy. Moreover, the results underscore the structural nature of unemployment as well as the mismatch between education qualifications and earning prospects in BiH. Education variables have no significant effect on the likelihood of being constrained, while, unlike in the advanced countries, being unemployed significantly increases the likelihood.
Keywords:
WP; credit market; credit constraint; demand and supply; low income
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Indonesia: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund
This Selected Issues paper for Indonesia reports that following the major cleanup of the banking sector after the crisis, banks’ performance has improved as net interest margins and profitability have increased. Public and external debt ratios have declined and international reserves have risen, reducing domestic and external vulnerabilities. Indonesia stands out as having experienced a slower recovery in investment and exports than other countries hit by the Asian crisis. Recognizing the challenge, the government has adopted a sound medium-term strategy focused on boosting economic growth.
Keywords:
ISCR; CR; Indonesia; export; growth performance; multiplicative Indonesia dummy; growth prospect; growth record; growth experience; Oil; Bank credit; Credit; Employment; Asia and Pacific; Middle East; East Asia; Sub-Saharan Africa; South Asia; Global
Cover IMF Staff Papers
IMF Staff papers: Volume 25 No. 3
International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
This paper examines the relationship between increases in the money supply and inflation in four developing countries. It is first shown that the growth in the money supply and inflation are linked in a two-way relationship in these countries, and then a dynamic model is designed that explicitly introduces the link in the form of reactions of the government fiscal deficit to inflation. The basic hypothesis is that an increase in the rate of inflation, whatever its cause, increases the real value of the fiscal deficit, because money expenditures keep pace with inflation while nominal revenues tend to lag. The model is estimated for the four countries, and the empirical results tend to validate the hypothesis. It is found that fiscal deficits play an important role in the inflation process, and that increases in these deficits are largely owing to the differences in the lags of government expenditures and revenues. Two basic policy conclusions emerge from this study: first, the tendency of government budgetary positions to be automatically destabilizing in developing economies underscores the need for an actively anti-inflation fiscal policy in these economies. Second, developing countries should attach priority to tax reforms designed to eliminate revenue lags.
Keywords:
SP; rate of inflation; money supply; price distortion; wage subsidy; inflation revenue curve; price level; inflationary finance; Inflation; Capital adequacy requirements; Personal income; Monetary base; Wages; Africa