The Impact of United States Sanctions on the Myanmar Garment Industry

The United States imposed trade sanctions against the military regime in Myanmar in July 2003. The import ban damaged the garment industry in particular. This industry exported nearly half of its products to the United States, and more than eighty percent of United States imports from Myanmar had been clothes. The garment industry was probably the main target of the sanctions. Nevertheless, the impact on the garment industry and its workers has not been accurately evaluated or closely examined. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the sanctions and to further understand the present situation. This is done using several sources of information, including the author's field and questionnaire surveys. This paper also describes the process of selection and polarization underway in the garment industry, an industry that now has more severe competition fueled by the sanctions. Through such a process, the impact was inflicted disproportionately on small and medium-sized domestic firms and their workers.

米国経済制裁によるミャンマー縫製産業への影響－苦しむのは誰か？－

2003年7月、米国はミャンマー製品の全面的な輸入禁止という、厳しい経済制裁を発動した。この制裁の最大の被害者は、ミャンマー縫製産業であった。制裁発動前、ミャンマーの対米輸出の８割以上は衣料品だったからである。多くの企業が倒産し、多くの労働者が職を失った。しかし、これまでその影響を包括的かつ正確に評価した調査・研究は皆無であった。本論文は現地での詳細なフィールド・ワークに基づき、経済制裁がミャンマー縫製産業に与えた影響を分析する。経済制裁で苦しむのは誰か。そして、経済制裁は所期の効果を上げているのか。これらの疑問に答える。

A journey through the secret history of the Flying Geese Model

Economic development in East Asia is characterized by the sequential "take-off" of member countries. This multi-tiered economic development in East Asia is often termed the “Flying Geese” pattern of economic development. However, some authors argue that the traditional Flying Geese pattern is not applicable to some industries such as electronics. Here, Japan may no longer be the sole "leading goose", with "followers" such as China (now producing cutting-edge products) having "caught-up". Does this mean that the Flying Geese Model has become "obsolete" in the 21st century? The main objective of this paper is to clarify the two concepts of Flying Geese which now seem confused: (1) application of the pattern of economic development in one specific country, and (2) application of the pattern of economic development to multiple countries in sequence. This paper provides validity checks of Flying Geese Models after differentiating these two concepts more clearly

Measuring fixed costs for firms' use of a free trade agreement : threshold regression approach

In this paper, by employing the threshold regression method, we estimate the average tariff equivalent of fixed costs for the use of a free trade agreement (FTA) among all existing FTAs in the world. It is estimated to be 3.2%. This global estimate serves as a reference rate in the evaluation of each FTA’s fixed costs.