Immigration and economic development in Eastern Asia

This work describes recent trends in East Asian migration and their economic effects. The great waves of emigration of the past have largely ceased from Japan and the "dragons" of East Asia, and all have become countries of illegal immigration, return of emigrants, and legal entry of professionals. All the countries except Hong Kong have maintained strict immigration policies in order to protect their traditional and homogeneous societies and the employment and income of their own citizens. But despite active encouragement of industrial displacement to countries with cheap and abundant manpower, the labor shortages in these countries have become so severe that they have had to tolerate increased immigration. There is little evidence that immigrants have taken the jobs of natives or caused their incomes to decrease. They appear to complement shrinking local labor forces in these countries of drastically reduced fertility. The annual growth of the active population is predicted to decline from 523,000 in the 1980s to 227,000 in the 1990s in Japan, from 231,000 to 149,000 in Taiwan, and from 400,000 to 300,000 in Korea. Full employment was achieved in Japan in the early 1960s, in Taiwan in the late 1960s, in Hong Kong in the early 1970s, and in Korea in the late 1980s. Full employment was the major factor prompting relaxed immigration controls in these countries. The foreign workers are concentrated in less skilled jobs in dirty or dangerous industries that are shunned by the local population. Opponents of liberalized immigration policies cite the supplementary expenditures for infrastructure and services necessitated by the workers as well as for integration of workers desiring longterm settlement, especially if they are of different ethnicity. No definitive conclusions can be drawn about the overall positive or negative impact of immigration in East Asia without specifying the perspective from which the analysis is made--economic or social, short or long term, from the employee's viewpoint or the employer's. The consequences of importing manpower must be studied in relation to possible alternatives.     

Analysis: Trade openness,economic development and civil war onset in the post-colonial world, 1950–1992

This article reinvestigates the effects of trade openness and economic development on civil war. While some scholars argue that economic openness increases domestic turmoil, others claim that it promotes domestic peace. Focusing on trade openness as a key indicator of economic openness, hypotheses derived from previous research are tested against data for 83 states in the post-colonial world from 1950 to 1992. Results show that increased trade openness and economic development reduce the risk of civil war. The effect of trade is slightly greater with higher economic development. Civil war is more likely with oil export dependence, increased militarization, mixed regimes, mountainous terrain, and increased ethnic fractionalization.     

后危机时代俄罗斯经济发展悖论探析

由美国次贷危机所引发的世界金融危机对每一个国家的经济都产生了很大的冲击,俄罗斯也未能幸免。但金融危机的影响时效有多长,后危机时代经济发展的推动点何在,是许多国家所共同关注的问题。本文梳理了后危机时代世界经济的发展趋势与特征,对比了俄罗斯经济与世界经济的发展趋势,得出他们之间存在一定的悖论。     

The dynamics of contemporary local-government policies and economic development in West Papua

There have been enormous political, economic, and social changes in West Papua. Every governor of West Papua has designed programmes to boost economic development and reduce poverty. The influx of migrant workers under the ‘transmigration programme’ into West Papua has limited the job opportunities for indigenous people in the labour market. This article concludes that the local government's strategies failed to deliver suitable development programmes to the local people, which resulted in increased poverty, the continuing poor development of the education system, and the deterioration of the population's health condition, with a rise in the number of Papuans infected with HIV and AIDS.     

The Asian economic crisis and bureaucratic development: a veto player analysis

The Asian economic crisis ravaged numerous economies in thelate 1990s. Significant social and political disruption followedthe fall in Asian currency prices. The newly industrializedstates of Asia were particularly hard hit, yet some also experiencedswift turnarounds, reaching pre-crisis currency rates and economicoutput. The enduring puzzle of the crisis is the role of bureaucratic-businessties as a background cause of the crisis and determinant ofgovernmental policy responses. In this paper, we adapt Tsebelis'veto player model to include bureaucracy as a formal actor inthe adjustment process. We argue that states that minimizedthe control of developmental bureaucracies over finance anddirect managerial decision-making weakened the institutionalcapacity of bureaucrats to veto adjustment policies, both beforeand after the 1997 crisis. Moreover, we find that a traditionof strategic regulatory guidance is associated with favorableeconomic performance, provided that bureaucrats had subjectedprivate firms or state-owned enterprises to competition (oreven business failure) historically, and where the risks associatedwith financial decisions were not socialized by the state.     

19 世纪上半期欧俄河运、商品流通和经济发展

18～19世纪俄国的交通联系严重受制于地理环境,土路铺设困难,春秋季节土路不易行车。铁路大规模兴修前,水路因成本低,无需大量投入,载货量大而长期唱主角,欧俄各地尽享众多河流泛舟之利,地区劳动分工更明确,生产与市场的联系更密切,粮食、木材和金属等大宗商品流通更顺畅。河运与农业生产的需要大体吻合,农业生产是季节性的,农产品的运输也是季节性的。工业生产需要连续进行,无论是原料的供应,产品的销售都需要及时畅通,产销脱节无疑会制约工业生产的发展,乌拉尔的冶金业即是明证。由此,工业革命的发端和迅速兴修铁路则预示着河运的黄金时代已过。     

口蹄疫防制技术的研究和发展

从诊断技术、分子流行病学、疫苗的研制和应用以及消毒技术等方面概述世界口蹄疫防制技术的研究和发展.     

Values,Communication Behavior,and Political Participation

This article examines how communication patterns mediate the influences of values on political participation. We find that the positive effects of postmaterial values on participation are mediated through reading public affairs content in newspapers. In contrast, materialist values negatively affect participation through watching television entertainment. Interpersonal discussion in which disagreement occurs mediates both the positive effect of reading public affairs and the negative effect of materialism on political participation. We also provide what may be a better explanation of the influence of communication patterns on political participation by going beyond acquisition of factual political knowledge. We show that individuals' efforts to think about news and search for additional information and perspectives modify what people "get from" media. Reflecting about news and integrating information from various sources promote better understanding of the political world and may provide a stronger cognitive base for political participation than factual political knowledge.     

Size matters: the need for human-scale economic institutions for development

Current mainstream development thinking, with the exception of a few areas like microcredit, tends to favour size over substance. This article aims to challenge the belief that large-scale companies, markets, and institutions are the most effective means of ‘delivering development’. We argue that, by designing institutions to meet different needs at different scales, long-term sustainable development outcomes are more likely. Through an analysis of ‘new economics’ thinking, we look specifically at how the concept of subsidiarity could be applied to development thinking at the community and business levels, and we draw on some examples of where the concept is already manifest in practice, such as energy and commodity production.     

Determinants of civil war in post-colonial Asia, 1950-1992: the role of trade openness and economic development

Although Asia has experienced civil war about as often as Sub-SaharanAfrica during the post-World War II era, there have been fewsystematic investigations into the determinants of civil warin Asia. This article examines the effects of trade opennessand economic development on the onset of civil war in post-colonialAsia, controlling for political, demographic, and geographicfactors. Analyzing data on post-colonial Asian states between1950 and 1992, we find that the onset of civil war is less likelywith increased trade openness. However, when taking into accountinteraction between trade openness and economic development,we discover that increased trade openness reduces the likelihoodof civil war onset significantly only in the context of higheconomic development. This result is robust with different modelspecifications.     

Inter-disciplinarity,development studies,and development practice1

The article primarily seeks to show the interconnectedness of diverse academic disciplines and their crucial role in development practice. It sheds light on the meanings of development-related concepts and seeks to delineate between the four inter-related concepts of multi-, inter-, trans-, and cross-disciplinarity. It argues that while inter-disciplinarity is desirable for a broad-based discipline such as Development Studies, the appropriateness of the concept when juxtaposed with trans-disciplinarity seems somewhat inadequate. Buttressing the importance of the contributions of all disciplines and of course development initiatives to Development Studies, case studies of failed water and agricultural projects – which never incorporated vital and cognate expertise – in the South are, thus, provided in the discourse.