Foreign aid, wage inequality and welfare for a small open economy with tourism

While the welfare effect of foreign aid has been extensively analyzed, the impact on the distribution of income has received less attention. At the same time, there has been recent work on tourism where it is complementary to aid in improving welfare.By combining these two strands, this paper concentrates on wage inequality in developing countries.We find that an increase in aid in the form of tied aid can lower the relative price of nontraded goods. The rent extracted from tourists declines, reducing welfare of domestic residents. In addition, the fall in the nontradable price can widen the wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers.Thus, increased foreign aid may have detrimental effects on national welfare and the distribution of income. Rising wage inequality is confirmed by numerical simulations.

Foreign direct investment and exports : the experiences of Vietnam

We examined the implementation statuses of a total of 5,919 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects approved by the Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment since 1988, and compiled a database of actually disbursed FDI in Vietnam. The database covers FDI flows into Vietnam from 23 countries from 1990 to 2004. Using the data, we analyzed the impact of FDI on the exports of Vietnam with gravity equations. The empirical results demonstrate that FDI is one of the major factors driving the rapid export growth of Vietnam. It has significantly facilitated the expansion of Vietnam's exports to FDI source countries. In particular, the empirical analysis shows that a 1 percent increase in FDI inflows will be expected to give rise to a 0.13 percent increase in Vietnam's exports to these countries.

International standing, international reputation and Australian foreign policy

This thesis provides a systematic study of the concepts of international standing and international reputation in four significant episodes in Australian foreign policy in the second half of the Twentieth Century. These concepts are shown to have influenced Australian diplomacy, both as objects of policy and as instruments of policy.

Issues in Australian foreign policy : July to December 2010

Two unforseen developments impeded the Labor government’s capacity to pursue its foreign policy objectives in the period under review. Firstly, Labor’s precarious standing in the parliament tilted the government’s policy agenda in favour of issues that the Greens prioritised. Gillard addressed some of these issues, for instance by holding the parliamentary debate on Afghanistan and by pursuing Japan over whaling in the Southern Ocean, but not to the degree that the Greens demanded. Immigration was emblematic of the government’s travails. The Greens advocated an increase in the refugee intake, but the Coalition favoured the resumption of offshore processing. Just when Labor’s proposed Timorese solution was becoming a realistic possibility, the High Court’s decision devalued the entire notion of offshore processing. The only consolation for the government was that the court had reduced the options available to all political parties.

Secondly, the Wikileaks saga revealed that Rudd may no longer be — and perhaps never was — Labor’s trump card in the realm of foreign policy. American assessments of the foreign minister’s character and judgment were in parts scathing. The Obama administration, nonetheless, appeared to readily and usefully absorb his analysis of Chinese politics. Quite how revelations of Rudd’s conversations with Clinton will affect his relations with the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party is another matter. It may well be that Rudd’s influence on Chinese leaders was always wildly overestimated, but in any case it seemed likely that the foreign minister would spend some time rebuilding ties with Beijing in 2011.

A third development — which hitherto had applied more in the realm of perception than reality — similarly threatened to limit the options open to future Australian governments of all stripes: the intensifying debate over alliance management that Hugh White’s essay instigated. Judgments about what sort of region — and what sort of China — Australia will face were imprinted in issues such as the rare earths find and the AUSMIN meeting. By the end of 2010, few issues could be discussed without reference to the China factor.

The waterhole : using educational drama as a pedagogical tool in a foreign language class at a public primary school in Japan

This study investigates Japanese primary school students’ and teachers’ responses to educational drama as a pedagogical tool in their English language classes. Along with the participants’ responses, the applicability of educational drama as a teaching method for the Japanese teachers is also discussed. The study was conducted in Japan as ateacher-researcher using participatory action research methods. The participants of the study are three Year Six classes and their teachers in a public primary school in Japan. Educational drama is introduced as an alternative teaching and learning method to these participants who have had no experience of drama in education.

Foreign correspondents and fixers: an investigation of teamwork in international television newsgathering

This thesis considers the relationship between television foreign correspondents and their locally-hired 'fixers' in order to ascertain the centrality and significance of this relationship in facilitating international news production. The design of this research project, with its emphasis on news production practice, was guided by scholars in the sociology of news tradition, such as Jeremy Tunstall, Michael Schudson, Stephen Reese, Pamela Shoemaker and Simon Cottle. The main research question asks to what extent, and how, is the relationship between the correspondent and the fixer important to newsgathering? Drawing on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu concerning the journalistic field and the acquisition of cultural capital, this research demonstrates how fixers possess vital stores of capital which foreign correspondents borrow in order to be successful in the field. This thesis explores in depth how the players work in tandem to overcome the difficulties posed by multi-skilling, parachuting, instant live reporting, and the 24-hour news cycle. Current newsgathering practice in Iraq is investigated as a case study, which reveals the difficulties of reporting from this dateline and reflects on how the level of danger has changed the nature of the correspondent-fixer relationship. Within this relationship, where a correspondent has the ultimate power to hire and fire, a fixer nonetheless brings significant influence to bear on story generation and story coverage. But does this influence bring into the Western news agenda stories that genuinely reflect localised, indigenous viewpoints? Or, in this globalised world, are fixers simply 'People Like Us' (PLU), who have absorbed Western news values and will reinforce them through the stories that they propose? In other words, are correspondents likely to gain an insight into localised communities and their problems that they might not otherwise have understood, or will they have their own views and presumptions reflected back at them? This thesis examines what the use of fixers reveals about the political economy of news and the changing context of international news production. It asks whether the growing importance of fixers in newsgathering reflects a move by media companies to eventually outsource international newsgathering to local employees. This thesis employs a qualitative methodological approach involving semi-structured interviews with foreign correspondents and fixers to explore their modus operandi and to investigate the building of overseas news teams.

Popular consent and foreign policy choices : war against the Philippines and covert action in Chile

It is usually assumed that US policymakers need to generate popular consent in order to undertake regime change against another state. This article explores the ways in which contextual factors such as the joint democracy effect, popular values and public moods influenced efforts by elites in the United States to generate popular consent for regime change in the Philippines and Chile. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the United States undertook covert action in Chile due to public recognition of the target state's democratic credentials and a public mood opposed to further military ventures. In contrast, the absence of a strong joint democracy effect, a national mood infused with romantic nationalism qua militarism and social Darwinism facilitated efforts by US elites to generate consent for the invasion and occupation of the Philippines. Subsequently, this article contributes to understandings of the domestic-level factors that influence foreign policy decisions.

Consumer-citizens of China : the role of foreign brands in the imagined future China

This book presents a comprehensive examination of Chinese consumer behaviour and challenges the previously dichotomous interpretation of the consumption of Western and non-Western brands in China.