Location choice in low-income countries : evidence from Japanese investments in East Asia

Unlike most existing studies, this paper examines the location choices of MNEs in developing countries. Specifically, we investigate the location choices of Japanese MNEs among East Asian developing countries by estimating a four-stage nested logit model at the province level. Noteworthy results of location elements are as follows. As is consistent with the mechanics of cheap labor-seeking FDI, Japanese MNEs are more likely to invest in locations with low income and low tariff rates on products from Japan. Also, accessibility to other locations and/or ports matters in attracting Japanese MNEs because it is crucial in importing materials and exporting their products. In addition, WTO membership and bilateral investment treaties are important because these contribute to the settlement of trade and investment disputes, which is more likely to be necessary in developing countries.

Establishing electoral administration systems in new democracies

The difficulty of holding fair elections continues to be a critical problem in many newly democratized countries. The core of the problem is the electoral administration's lack of political autonomy and capability to regulate fraud. This paper seeks to identify the conditions for establishing an autonomous and capable electoral administration system. An electoral administration system has two main functions: to disclose the nature of elections and to prevent fraud. We argue in this paper that an autonomous and capable electoral administration system exists if the major political players have the incentive to disclose the information on the elections and to secure the ruler's credible commitment to fair elections. We examine this argument through comparative case studies of Korea and the Philippines. Despite similar historical and institutional settings, their election commissions exhibit contrasting features. The difference in the incentive structures of the major political players seems to have caused the divergence in the institutional evolution of the election commissions in the two countries.

Agricultural efficiency of rice farmers in Myanmar : a case study in selected areas

This paper try to analyze unique data set for rice producing agricultural households in some selected areas of Bago and Yangon divisions to examine the households' profit efficiency and the relationship between farm and household attributes and profit inefficiency using a Cobb-Douglas production frontier function. The frequency distribution reveals that the mean technical inefficiency is 0.1627 with a minimum of 3 percent and maximum of 73 percent which indicates that, on average, about 16% of potential maximum output is lost owing to technical inefficiency in both studied areas. While 85% of the sample farms exhibit profit inefficiency of 20% or less, about 40% of the sample farms is found to exhibit technical inefficiency of 20% or less, indicating that among the sample farms technical inefficiency is much lower than profit inefficiency.

Low workforce participation of educated female and the role of work organizations in post-war Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka as a developing economy that achieved gender equity in education and a higher literacy rate (both adult and youth) in the South Asian region still records a low labor force participation and high unemployment rate of females when compared to their male counterparts. With the suggestion of existing literature on the non-conventional models of careers those adopted by young and female populations at the working age, this paper discusses the role of work organizations in absorbing more females (and even minority groups) into the workforce. It mainly focuses on the need of designing appropriate human resource strategies and reforming the existing organizational structures in order for contributing to the national development in the post-war Sri Lanka economy.

政治制度と政策帰結 -- 予算策定過程における大統領拒否権の効果

本稿では，大統領制のもとでの執政府と立法府の権限配分が政策帰結に与える影響を考える。特に 予算策定過程における大統領の部分的拒否権の役割に注目し，部分的拒否権が大統領に有利な政策帰 結を生み出すものの，全体拒否権が行使されたときの回帰点の位置次第で，あるいは，議会がどの程 度大統領に制裁を行使できるか次第で，部分的拒否権の効果が失われ，回帰点から離脱できない状況 が生まれることを示す。これを検証するため，フィリピンにおける予算策定過程（1994～2008年） を事例としてとりあげる。フィリピンでは，一般歳出法制定に関して大統領に部分的拒否権が与えら れているため大統領優位に予算策定が行われてきた。しかし，財政赤字拡大が進行した時期には，議 会が一般歳出法を制定せず，前年度予算の再執行を行っており，これは回帰点から離脱できない状況 と考えられる。

Consensus and democracy in Indonesia : Musyawarah-Mufakat revisited

This paper analyzes customary practices of consensus decision making, called musyawarah-mufakat, as a basis of democratic stability in Indonesia. Musyawarah and mufakat (deliberation and consensus) are a traditional decision-making rule in Indonesia which has often been observed in village meetings. This paper argues that this traditional decision-making rule is still employed even in a modernized and democratized Indonesia, not only at rural assemblies but in the national parliament as well. Furthermore, this consensus way of decision making provides an institutional basis for democratic stability by giving every parliamentary player, whether big or small, an equal opportunity to express his/her interests. On the other hand, this system of musyawarah‐mufakat decreases political efficiency in the sense that it takes a long time to deliberate drafted laws in the parliament.

メキシコのブロイラー・インテグレーション -- 進化と調整形態の規定要因

ブロイラー・インテグレーションとは，ブロイラーの生産・流通の川上から川下までの様々な部門を統合した大規模生産・流通システムである。その形成は世界の鶏肉産業で広範に観察されるが，興味深いのは，国毎に形成の度合いや部門間の調整形態が異なることである。メキシコの特徴は第１に近年インテグレーションが川下部門へ急進展したこと，第２にインテグレーターによる養鶏部門の調整形態として，所有による統合の比率が高いことである。ちなみに，世界最大の鶏肉生産国アメリカでは，調整形態は生産委託が一般的である。本稿ではこれら２つの特徴を規定する要因をブロイラー産業の産業組織の分析により検証した。その結果，インテグレーション形成の度合いが競争環境や流通市場の構造に大きく規定されること，インテグレーターの出自により所有する経営資源が異なるために，ターゲットとする市場や養鶏部門の調整形態について異なる選択が行われることを明らかにした。

Non-conventional provisions in regional trade agreements : do they enhance international trade?

The scope of recent regional trade agreements (RTAs) is becoming much wider in terms of including several provisions such as competition policy or intellectual property. This paper empirically examines how far advanced, non-conventional provisions in RTAs increase trade values among RTA member countries, by estimating the gravity equation with more disaggregated indicators for RTAs. As a result, we find that the provision on competition policy has the largest impacts on trade values, following that on government procurement. Our further analysis reveals that the more significant roles of these two provisions can be also observed in the impacts on the intensive and extensive margins.

Export platform FDI and firm heterogeneity

This paper investigates theoretically and empirically firms' productivity ranking among traditional horizontal foreign direct investment (HFDI), pure platform FDI (PFDI), and complex platform FDI (CFDI). Using data on Japanese outward FDI, we define firms conducting HFDI or PFDI as those Japanese firms that maintain production affiliates only in the U.S. or Mexico, respectively. The firms for CFDI are defined as having production affiliates in both the U.S. and Mexico. The theoretical illustration shows that the CFDI firms should have the highest productivity when trade costs between the U.S. and Mexico are low. By carefully disentangling firms' self-selection effects from learning-by-investing effects, we find some evidence consistent with this hypothesis for a period of relatively low trade costs. Our results indicate the importance of trade costs in developing countries with neighboring markets in attracting foreign investment by highly productive multinational firms.

How serious is the omission of bilateral tariff rates in gravity?

In this paper, using the worldwide dataset of bilateral tariff rates, we explore how serious the omission of bilateral tariff rates in gravity is. Our findings are as follow. Firstly, the omission of bilateral tariff rates seems not to be so serious in terms of omitted-variable biases because the coefficients for the usual gravity variables do not change before or after their inclusion. Secondly, while the widely-used dummy variable of regional trade agreement could not play an alternative role in place of tariff rates, the inclusion of time-invariant pair fixed effects in addition to the time-variant importer fixed effects and exporter fixed effects accounts for the omission of tariff rates. The inclusion of those fixed effects makes the coefficient for bilateral tariff rates insignificant.

Do export promotion agencies increase exports?

In this paper, we examine the role of export promotion agencies (EPAs) in promoting exports from Japan and Korea. Looking at two home countries enables us to tackle endogeneity issues by controlling for both country-pair time-invariant characteristics and importing country time-varying characteristics. Our empirical results indicate that the coefficients of the EPA dummy are similar in size to those of the FTA dummy. This implies that establishing an EPA office in a country is equivalent to signing an FTA with that country. In addition, we find that EPA’s effects are larger for manufactured products than non-manufactured products. Finally, the EPA effect is larger for low income trade partners than for high income trade partners.

Growth strategies in a greener world

Two new developments in the global landscape - growing concerns towards global warming and the rising prices of commodities – require countries to craft new growth strategies. These recent developments in the global market offer fresh industrial opportunities as well as difficulties for developing countries embarking on industrialization. In this paper, we examine current developments in global market that would affect industrialization prospects in East Asia and explores development strategies that are suitable for development based on export oriented manufacturing industries in a green world.

Production networks in the Asia-Pacific region : facts and policy implications

Production networks have been extensively developed in the Asia-Pacific region. This paper employs two micro-level approaches, case studies and econometric analysis, using JETRO's firm surveys which investigate Japanese affiliates operating in Southeast Asia. These two approaches found that production networks have extended, involving suppliers, across various nations in the Asia-Pacific region, and that production bases in host and home countries have different roles. A home country serves as a headquarters with services such as R&D, international marketing, and financing. A high tariff policy in a host country may foster domestic industries through the expansion of procurement from domestic suppliers, either indigenous or foreign, but it may discourage a country from becoming an export platform.

ペルーのブロイラー・インテグレーション形成における統合の範囲と主体

ペルーのブロイラー部門は，1980年代までに外国からの技術導入とインテグレーションの形成が進み，1990年代の淘汰と集中のなかで，生産と消費が急速に拡大した。このブロイラー・インテグレーションの発展は，米国や日本などの先行国と２つの点で大きく異なる。１点目は生産部門でのインテグレーションの進行にもかかわらず，生産と流通の間のインテグレーションが進まず，現在でも生産量の約８割が生きたまま卸売段階まで流通していることである。この要因として挙げられるのが，産地と消費地の近接，安い人件費や消費者の慣習・嗜好による加工度の低い鶏肉への需要，実効性をもたない食鳥衛生管理規制である。２点目は，先行国のように飼料や食肉加工部門ではなく，飼養部門を中心に拡大した企業がインテグレーションを形成していることである。この要因としては，飼料，種鶏，加工部門では付加価値を生み出す余地が少なかったこと，そして飼養部門では規模拡大が比較的容易だったことが指摘できる。

チリのブロイラー産業における所有型インテグレーションの形成

チリのブロイラー産業は近年高い成長を遂げているが，その産業構造は世界的にみても特殊である。契約養鶏農家とパッカーという分業関係がなく，少数の寡占企業によって，完全所有型の垂直統合が進められている。チリにおいて，ブロイラー産業がこのような産業構造をもつことを，本稿では不完備契約論のフレームワークを用いて分析し，パッカーによって寡占が形成され企業が多角化戦略をとる場合には，効率的であることを示した。 ブロイラー産業の寡占の形成の要因は，1980年代の経済危機による中小養鶏農家の倒産，および大規模養鶏企業による積極的な買収と，衛生基準の引き上げによる加工施設投資の増大をあげることができる。また，検疫制度やトレーサビリティーの導入も，参入障壁を形成する要因となっている。ブロイラー産業の寡占企業は垂直的な統合とともに，豚や七面鳥といった，処理施設・流通システム網を利用する他の産品への多角化も積極的に進めている，という共通する特徴を有する。