Foreign Direct Investment Relations between Myanmar and ASEAN

Myanmar highly appreciates foreign direct investment (FDI) as a key solution reducing the development gap with leading ASEAN countries. Accordingly, it is welcomed by the government. Myanmar's Foreign Investment Law was enacted in 1988 soon after the adoption of a market-oriented economic system to boost the flow of FDI into the country. Foreign investors positively responded to these measures in the early years and FDI inflow into Myanmar gradually increased during the period from 1989 to 1996. However, after 1997, FDI inflow was dramatically reduced and markedly declined until 2004. In 2005, FDI inflow increased at an unprecedented rate and reached the highest level in the country's history. However, this growth was not sustainable in the subsequent years, as it declined again and turned stagnant at the previous level. In terms of source regions, ASEAN is a major investor in Myanmar, which investment is significantly exceeds the combined investment of other regions of the world. Among top ten countries, Thailand's investment alone is significantly more than combined total investments of the other nine countries. Next to Thailand in terms of investments in Myanmar are Singapore and Malaysia among ASEAN, at second and third places, respectively. The combined total FDI inflows into the power and oil and gas sector represent about 65 percent of the total investment. There are many opportunities for foreign investment in other sectors, which are not, yet exploited. ASEAN countries will certainly be source countries of Myanmar FDI in the future, and Myanmar should expand to other Asian countries like Japan, India, China, Korea, and Hong Kong where its FDI portfolio is concerned. To effectively attract FDI into the country, Myanmar needs to minimize the effect of policy while opening and encouraging other potential sectors of FDI to foreign investors in ASEAN and Asian countries.

No insulation : politics and technocracy's troubled trajectory

Technocracy often holds out the promise of rational, disinterested decision-making. Yet states look to technocracy not just for expert inputs and calculated outcomes but to embed the exercise of power in many agendas, policies and programs. Thus, technocracy operates as an appendage of politically constructed structures and configurations of power, and highly placed technocrats cannot be 'mere' backroom experts who supply disinterested rational-technical solutions in economic planning, resource allocation and social distribution, which are inherently political. This paper traces the trajectories of technocracy in conditions of rapid social transformation, severe economic restructuring, or political crises - when the technocratic was unavoidably political.

Ex ante bargaining and ex post enforcement in trade credit supply: theory and evidence from China

If payment of goods is easily default, economic transaction may deeply suffer from the risk. This risky environment formed a mechanism that governs how economic transaction is realized, subsequently how trade credit is given. This paper distinguished ex ante bargaining and ex post enforcement, then modeled that bargaining power reduces trade credit ex ante, and ex post enforcement power and cash in hand of buyer can enhances both trade amount and trade credit in a presence of default risk. We modeled this relationship in order to organize findings from previous literature and from our original micro data on detailed transaction in China to consistently understand the mechanism governing trade credit. Then empirically tested a structure from the theoretical prediction with data. Results show that ex post enforcement power of seller mainly determines size of trade credit and trade amount, cash in hand of buyer can substitute with enforcement power; Bargaining power of seller is exercised to reduces trade credit and trade amount for avoiding default risk, but it simultaneously improves enforcement power as well. We found that ex post enforcement power consists of (ex ante) bargaining power on between two parties and intervention from the third party. However, its magnitude is far smaller than the direct impact to reduce trade credit and trade amount.