Do Foreign Currency Deposits Promote or Deter Financial Development in Low-Income Countries? An Empirical Analysis of Cross-Country Data

Foreign currency deposits (FCD) are prevalent in many low-income developing countries, but their impact on bank lending has rarely been examined. An examination of cross-country data indicates that a higher proportion of FCD in total deposits is associated with growth in private credit only in inflationary circumstances (over 24 percent of the annual inflation rate). FCD can lead to a decline in private credit below this threshold level of inflation. Given that FCD exhibit persistence, deregulating them in low-income countries may do more harm than good on financial development in the long term, notably after successful containment of inflation.

Domestic Market-based Industrial Cluster Development in Modern China

China’s huge domestic market is constantly expanding, and is low-end demand oriented and highly dispersed. The domestic market-based development of China’s industrial cluster, however, is not only a quantitative expansion, but has also been accompanied with remarkable qualitative upgrading. Specialized markets are a microcosm that clearly indicate this paradoxical phenomenon. By analyzing three typical cases of industrial clusters that have specialized markets, this paper will make the case that under modern China’s market conditions, the local public sector is the crucial driving force for upgrading industrial clusters, which organize complicated transactions, promote quality control, and stimulate the division of labor.

Re-examining "difference" and "development" : a note on broadening the field of gender and development in Japan

It is the author’s position that the framework for WID/GAD, as academic field and practice concerned primarily with developing countries should be broadened so as to incorporate Japan’s own gender and development issues in its scope. Unlike other developed countries, activists and scholars in Japan rarely connected, as was also the case with the fields of women’s/gender studies and WID/GAD. However, this was not due to any lack of interest among Japanese women regarding the lives of women in developing countries. Rather the points of fissure were the notions of ‘difference’ and ‘development’ held by Japanese women. These analytical concepts were narrowly defined, which resulted in limited interaction between discourse on women’s issues in Japan and WID/GAD related to ‘other’ women. By re-examining these notions and looking more deeply into perceived differences in the local context of ‘development’, not only can we strategize on ‘differences’ in such a way that we draw strength from the very fact of being different, but also prevent ‘differences’ from being used as grounds for discrimination. As a whole, we could gain substantially by broadening the field of Gender and Development and, as such, it is imperative that this field be broadened with urgency as development itself changes in this ever-interconnected world