バングラデシュの政府と公益

バングラデシュのようにガバナンスの弱い国では政府のみならず民間部門が公益実現のために大きな役割を果たしている。公益を担う民間部門は非営利団体でもあり得るし、利益を追求する私企業でもあり得る。いずれにしても政府が十分に機能していない場合には誰かがその肩代わりをしなければならない。誰がどの部分を担うのか、は国によって異なるだろう。バングラデシュの例はそのパターンの多様性を我々に教えてくれる。

Infrastructure development and economic growth in China

China is the fastest growing country in the world for last few decades and one of the defining features of China's growth has been investment-led growth. China's sustained high economic growth and increased competitiveness in manufacturing has been underpinned by a massive development of physical infrastructure. In this context, we investigate the role of infrastructure in promoting economic growth in China for the period 1975 to 2007. Overall, the results reveal that infrastructure stock, labour force, public and private investments have played an important role in economic growth in China. More importantly, we find that Infrastructure development in China has significant positive contribution to growth than both private and public investment. Further, there is unidirectional causality from infrastructure development to output growth justifying China's high spending on infrastructure development since the early nineties. The experience from China suggests that it is necessary to design an economic policy that improves the physical infrastructure as well as human capital formation for sustainable economic growth in developing countries.

Do international flights promote FDI? : the role of face-to-face communication

Air transportation facilitates face-to-face interactions across borders for the spatial expansion of manufacturing production. I investigate the impact of international flights on FDI entry by Japanese firms. I find that FDI entry significantly increases with the weekly frequency of flights from Japan, and the positive impact increases with a proxy for an intensity of face-to-face communication between the parent firm and foreign affiliate. The results are robust to estimation methods, additional control variables, and definitions of face-to-face communication. Thus, the results suggest that flights encourage FDI entry through a reduction in face-to-face communication costs.