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E-commerce as a Potential New Engine for Growth in Asia
The use of e-commerce around the world has accelerated in recent years, with Asia, led by China, spearheading the rise. Using cross-country enterprise survey data, this paper shows that firms engaged in e-commerce have higher productivity and generate a larger share of their revenues from exports than other firms. This is particularly true in Asia, where firms have 30 percent higher productivity and generate about 50 percent more of their revenues from exports. The results presented in this paper are robust to the use of instrumental variables, which highlight possible larger effects of e-commerce on Asian productivity and exports when essential elements are in place for its effective use, such as reliable electricity, telecommunication, and transport infrastructure. Despite the rapid growth of e-commerce in recent years, gaps persist in digital infrastructure and legislation, preventing many Asian countries from fully reaping the potential benefits of e-commerce.
The Impact of Monetary Policy Communication in an Emerging Economy: The Case of Indonesia
Since the adoption of the inflation targeting framework by Bank Indonesia (BI), monetary policy communication has played an increasingly important role in BI’s policy toolkit. This paper assesses BI’s monetary policy communication from three perspectives: i) its transparency and clarity, ii) its ability to align market expectation and BI’s policy decisions (predictability), and iii) its impact on financial markets. In particular, we assess the impact of BI’s monetary policy practices by focusing on its monetary policy press releases and monetary policy reports. The results show that Bank Indonesia has made significant progress in the transparency of its communication as well as in the institutional framework to support this. Nonetheless, the results also suggest ways in which the impact of communication can be further improved, including by strengthening the clarity of policy messages, its consistency with the policy framework and the depth of the money market.
Reallocating Public Spending to Reduce Income Inequality: Can It Work?
Can a government reduce income inequality by changing the composition of public spending while keeping the total level of expenditure fixed? Using newly assembled data on spending composition for 83 countries across all income groups, this paper shows that reallocating spending toward social protection and infrastructure is associated with reduced income inequality, particularly when it is financed through cuts in defense spending. However, the political and security situation matters. The analysis does not find evidence that lowering defense spending to finance infrastructure and social outlays improves income distribution in countries with weak institutions and at higher risk of conflict. Reallocating social protection and infrastructure spending towards other types of spending tends to increase income inequality. Accounting for the long-term impact of health spending, and particularly education spending, helps to better capture the equalizing effects of these expenditures. The paper includes a discussion of the implications of the findings for Indonesia, a major emerging market where income inequality is at the center of policy issues.
Structural Transformation — How Does Thailand Compare?
Thailand stands out in international comparison as a country with a high dispersion of productivity across sectors. It has especially low labor productivity in agriculture—a sector that employs a much larger share of the population than is typical for a country at Thailand’s level of income. This suggests large potential productivity gains from labor reallocation across sectors, but that process—which made a significant contribution to Thailand’s growth in the past—appears to have stalled lately. This paper establishes these facts and applies a simple model to discuss possible explanations. The reasons include a gap between the skills possessed by rural workers and those required in the modern sectors; the government’s price support programs for several agricultural commodities, particularly rice; and the uniform minimum wage. At the same time, agriculture plays a useful social and economic role as the employer of last resort. The paper makes a number of policy recommendations aimed at facilitating structural transformation in the Thai economy.
Decomposing the Inflation Dynamics in the Philippines
Inflation rates rose sharply in the Philippines during 2018. Understanding the demand and supply sources of inflation pressures is key to monetary policy response. Qualitatively, indicators have pointed to evidence of inflation pressures from both sides in 2018, with the supply factors, by and large, associated with commodity-price shocks and demand factors deduced from gleaning at the wider non-oil trade deficits seen in the Philippines. Quantitatively, we deploy a semi-structural model to decompose the contributions of various shocks to inflation. Our main findings are (1) supply factors (mainly global commodity prices) played a prominent role in explaining the rise in inflation in 2018; (...
Fiscal Policy and Development
The goal of this paper is to estimate the additional annual spending required for meaningful progress on the SDGs in these areas. Our estimates refer to additional spending in 2030, relative to a baseline of current spending to GDP in these sectors. Toward this end, we apply an innovative costing methodology to a sample of 155 countries: 49 low- income developing countries, 72 emerging market economies, and 34 advanced economies. And we refine the analysis with five country studies: Rwanda, Benin, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Guatemala.
Marcel Breuer
This book tracks the development of Marcel Breuer’s aesthetic clash between uniformity and singularity through the detailed examination of his seminal buildings. Each chapter examines a specific building and puts into context Breuer’s other work and the contemporary movements/architects of the post-war era such as Surrealism, Brutalism and structural expressionism. The buildings examined include the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France, of 1958; the IBM Research Center in Le Gaude, France, of 1962; the Annunciation Priory in Bismark, North Dakota, of 1963; and the Atlanta Central Library of 1980. Marcel Breuer’s approach to design was inspired by the Spanish phrase, sol y sombra (sun a...
Indonesia
This 2016 Article IV Consultation highlights that Indonesia has maintained macroeconomic stability, while adjusting well to recent shifts in the external environment. A prudent mix of macroeconomic policies and the launch of structural reforms have helped the economy weather slow global growth, the commodity down cycle, and several episodes of financial turbulence affecting emerging market economies. Growth in 2016 is projected at 5 percent on account of robust private consumption. In 2017, growth is expected to rise modestly to 5.1 percent, led by a gradual pickup in private investment in response to stronger commodity prices, low interest rates, and a recovery in external demand on the back of a pickup in global growth and trade.
Globalisation and Sustainable Development
The 2000 Annual UNEP Finance Initiatives Roundtable: "Globalisation and Sustainable Development - Opportunities and Challenges for the Financial Services Sector" brought together perspectives on finance and sustainable development from some 260 senior representatives in the financial services, business, government, non-government and international government sectors. The topics discussed included: the role of micro-finance in poverty alleviation; environmental management and reporting in the finance sector; innovative financing of technologies for renewable energy; environmental performance indicators; the social aspects of corporate responsibility in a global context.
