Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

The economic, social, and political problems that the emerging states need to overcome to attain a higher level of development share several features with issues debated a half-century ago with regard to economic development and political transformation in developing countries. Contemporary challenges, however, contain many elements that are qualitatively different from the old problems because of enormous advances in communication/transportation technologies and the unprecedented expansion of the global transaction of goods, services, and financial resources. In order to maintain the catchup speed for the long run, the emerging states today need to compete to locate more value-added, high-skill, and technology-intensive segments of value chains within their borders. To do so, the governments of the emerging states need to play a role in providing public goods such as the enhancement of technological education and assistance for R&D activities, intermediating interests of various stakeholders, and helping to reduce social disparity. They are required to play such social and economic roles without succumbing to imprudent populism or outright autocracy.

Starting around the end of the 2000s, a certain term was often used in discussions about emerging Asian countries. This was the “middle-income trap,” a favored term of economists at international institutions and in American think tanks.

This paper investigated the middle-income trap for the ASEAN4 countries from the viewpoint of trade structure. The historical changes in the net export ratios for different type of goods revealed that the ASEAN4 countries had long been following the “flying geese” pattern, a sequential industrial upgrading after Japan and Asia NIEs, but diverged from the paths after year 2000. One possible factor that has caused the stagnant industrial upgrading in the ASEAN4 countries is the resource curse. After recovering from the recession caused by the Asian financial crisis in 1997/1998, resource-based industries in the ASEAN4 countries enjoyed booming prices of primary commodities, having diverged investments from manufacturing to primary industries. The second possible factor is the lack of homegrown MNCs in the manufacturing sector, making it difficult for the ASEAN4 countries to export parts and components to overseas MNCs. The policy to foster home companies with their own technology will bring long-lasting competitiveness in an industry, but once failed, the cost of being excluded from the regional production networks is very high. Therefore there is a choice between ‘shallow’ industrialization, depending on FDI and MNCs, and ‘deep’ industrialization by home companies with their own technology.

The economic growth of emerging states in Latin America has been lower than that of their Asian counterparts during the past thirty years. The immediately observable cause of the difference in performance is the former's heavy dependence on the production and processing of natural resources, as well as the delay in industrial and technological upgrading. However, deeper causes of the difference can be found in the political economies of these Latin American countries: weak societal trust, thin business networks within and beyond national borders, public administration of average quality, and the vicious circle of resource dependence and low investment in industrial and technological upgrading. Many features of the Latin American political economy were formed and reinforced by the region's historical experiences during the colonial period, the post independence period, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the period of import substitution industrialization.

Using a firm-level dataset from the manufacturing sector in Indonesia, we examine how firms’ ties with the government in receiving rents and with other firms and their managers’ trust toward foreigners and views of globalization are correlated with each other. We find that firms’ strong political ties are associated positively with the level of managers’ trust toward domestic citizens and the number of domestic buyers and suppliers and negatively with their level of trust toward foreign citizens. In turn, managers’ trust toward foreign citizens and firms’ transactions with foreign firms are positively correlated with each other, and trust and business networks within the country also show a positive correlation. Then, when managers trust domestic citizens more or when firms transact with more domestic firms, managers are more likely to have a negative view of globalization, incorporating such factors as the foreign ownership of firms and free trade. The results suggest a vicious cycle between the political ties of local firms and protectionist views and policies against globalization, which lead to economic stagnation due to a lack of diffusion of knowledge from abroad. This mechanism may explain why middle-income countries experience economic stagnation and cannot escape the “middle-income trap”.

The question of why some developing countries succeed in catching up technologically with developed countries while others fail to do so has attracted considerable interest among academics and policy makers. Since the notion of ‘middle-income trap’ emerged in the mid-2000s, the question has grown even more popular.

This chapter explores the development potential of the rubber industry in Malaysia and Thailand, which have been leaders in the production of natural rubber (NR) since the 20th century. The analysis of NR producing (upstream segment), processing (midstream segment) and rubber-based manufacturing (downstream segment) in Malaysia and Thailand will find the different timing and sectoral composition in the development of the rubber sector of two countries. It will become clear that in spite of such differences, the two countries share a development pattern in one important respect: The public sector played a crucial role in the development of the upstream segment, while the successful development of the downstream segment largely depends on innovative activities of private entrepreneurs to explore niche international markets for specialized rubber products.

This chapter discusses two challenges that producers in developing countries face when they participate in the global markets, namely, the marketing risks and the difficulty of standard compliance. We illustrate the importance of these factors by using cases from two export-oriented industries—the pineapple industry and the shrimp aquaculture industry. In the Ghanaian export pineapple industry, the risk of having unsold fruit is large and hinders the participation of poor farmers. The industry also experienced a sudden change in the variety demanded in the multinationals-dominated global market, and this resulted in a huge loss for producers. On the other hand, the marketing risk is small for pineapple producers in Thailand due to the diversity of processed items and their markets. From the shrimp industry, Vietnam faces a high rejection of exports at the ports of developed countries due to the use of prohibited elements at the production stage. On the other hand, Thailand was successful in transforming farming practices of small-scale shrimp producers over the years with efforts from various stakeholders. Providing easy access to public laboratories, requiring documents to assure traceability along the supply chain, and frequent exchange of information seemed to have played important roles.

South Africa is known for its light and shadow: Nelson Mandela’s moral leadership in constructing a “rainbow nation” on the one hand, and horrifying inequality as a legacy of apartheid on the other. South Africa’s post-apartheid economy is not only unequal but also stagnant. This chapter contends that, in order for South Africa to pull out of the “middle-income trap,” it is critical not only to make the workforce more productive and innovative but also to create decent jobs for the chronically unemployed in both cities and the countryside, thereby reinforcing national cohesion. After tracing the historical origin of inequality and describing the recent rise of the “black middle class” in South Africa, this chapter reviews a series of development policies of the post-apartheid government, indicating that the lack of resoluteness hinders implementation of policies that would make the South African economy more inclusive and dynamic. In conclusion, this chapter argues that short-term policies to upgrade technological capacity should be combined with long-term policy efforts that give voice to the poor and address the root causes of inequality.

South Korea’s GDP per capita—about $100 in the early 1960s—exceeded $20,000 in 2007, and its economy has become sophisticated, transitioning from labor-intensive to high-tech industries. South Korea is generally acknowledged as a successful example of a developmental state, and it transitioned politically into a formal democracy in 1987. However, its developmental strategy has recently caused social and economic problems. In order to understand the successes and challenges of South Korean development, this chapter focuses on the formation of human capital. As it is crucially important that labor force’s skills and knowledge are commensurate with the nation’s level of economic development, I examine the expansion of educational opportunities in South Korea in terms of both demand-side factors (e.g., industrial policy and business activities) and supply-side factors (e.g., nurturing of human capital through formal education and educational preferences of students and parents), which have been influenced by the political democratization and globalization. The education system has certainly contributed to the country’s development. However, in recent years a large mismatch between the supply and the demand of human capital has caused a grave problem of unemployment among university graduates.