Misc

© 2020 Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Due to the asymmetry of information between borrowers that are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and lenders (banks), many banks consider this sector to be risky. It is crucial for banks to be able to distinguish healthy companies from risky ones in order to reduce their nonperforming assets in the SME sector. If they can do this, lending and financing to SMEs through banks will be easier, with lower collateral requirements and lower interest rates. In this chapter, we provide a scheme originally developed by Yoshino and Taghizadeh-Hesary (2014) for assigning credit ratings to SMEs by employing two statistical analysis techniques - principal component analysis and cluster analysis - using 11 financial ratios of 1,363 SMEs in Asia. If used by financial institutions, this comprehensive and efficient method could enable banks and other lending agencies around the world, especially in Asia, to group SME customers based on financial health, adjust interest rates on loans, and set lending ceilings for each group.

This paper proposes replacing the present Basel capital requirement with a new counter-cyclical measure. Optimally, (i) the Basel capital requirement ratio should depend on various economic factors such as the cyclical stage of GDP, credit growth, stock prices, interest rates, and land prices-hence, avoiding the expansion of bank loans during a boom period and a credit crunch during a sluggish period (ii) the Basel minimum capital requirement rule should be different from country to country since the economic structures and the behavior of banks are different and (iii) crossborder bank operation should follow the minimum capital requirement ratio where bank lending activities occur rather than the origin of the source of funds. © 2011 The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This chapter will, first of all, describe how the flow of funds in Japan functions. Second, it explains how Hometown Investment Trust (HIT) funds can fund businesses that are likely to grow in future and are capable of making a social contribution, but entail risks. HIT funds have recently begun to grow, and we will make the case for the urgent need to foster such funds. There are two main reasons why this is important. First, as BIS capital adequacy requirements become more stringent worldwide, banks find it more difficult to provide funding to high-risk businesses and projects. Second, Japan's public finances are in dire straits. Local businesses outside the main urban centres used to be supported by subsidies from the centre to local regions in the form of national tax revenues allocated to local governments, national treasury disbursements, and government loan and investment funds. Under today's expanding fiscal deficits, however, issuance of deficit-financing bonds to provide for local regions has reached a limit, and the need to use private-sector funds to finance regional projects has become urgent (Yoshino and Mizoguchi, Financial policy review, Ministry of Finance of Japan, 2013 McNelis and Yoshino, Advs Complex Syst 15:1250057, 2012). The second half of this chapter will describe the flow of funds in Asia. Chapter 5 of this book will discuss concrete examples in Asia, where the financial systems also rely heavily on indirect financing via banks, so that the supply of funds to risk sectors is very likely to taper off. It is necessary to create mechanisms to supply various kinds of funds, including HIT funds that finance new corporations, businesses and environmental programs.

This paper discusses the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) ability to maintain a majority of seats in the Diet after WWII by focusing on the role of public investment. The paper discusses three periods, namely, (i) the high-growth period (1950 to 1985), (ii) the asset bubble period (1986 to 1990), and (iii) the period of economic downturn after the bubble (post 1990). During the highgrowth period, government investment had a strong positive output effect and it increased the tax revenue in the medium and long run. The high rate of private capital formation boosted growth and tax revenue even further. During the asset bubble period of the late 1980s, Japanese tax revenue increased due to high asset and property prices, and growth stayed high because of strong aggregate demand. The Japanese economy experienced slower growth after the asset bubble burst. The LDP continued its high-spending policy by issuing Japanese government bonds (JGB) to finance the deficits but has not been able to revive growth to previous levels. Accumulated government debt now amounts to 180 percent of GDP and it will be difficult to issue any more JGB. Fiscal policy in post-bubble Japan no longer fulfilled the stability conditions that were identified by Blinder and Solow (1974). © 2010 The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This study is an attempt to ascertain how oil price shock can affect a trade-linked system via monetary variables. To this end, a simultaneous equation model (SEM) was applied through a Weighted Two Stage Least Squares (W2SLS) estimation method to different countries (21 cases) with business relations over the period from Q1 2000 to Q4 2015. In the case of oil-exporting countries consisting of Iran, Russian Federation, UAE, Indonesia, and Kazakhstan the findings revealed that they totally benefit from oil price increases. In the case of oil importing countries, the effects are more diverse. To derive a better interpretation, we divided them into four groups: European Union (EU) members (Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland); East and South East Asian nations (Japan; People's Republic of China; Republic of Korea; Viet Nam; Taipei China; Singapore; and Hong Kong, China); Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) (Ukraine and Belarus) and others (the United States, India, and Turkey). The results showed that all these countries importing oil face a negative supply shock. Furthermore, the indirect effect coefficient almost received through trade for all these countries was positive.

Hong Kong's housing market witnessed a dramatic housing price appreciation in recent years, with the price index for private domestic housing units being three times higher than ten years ago. This trend is supported by both internal and external factors, as illustrated in this paper. By developing a theoretical model and an empirical analysis on the key variables influencing housing prices using monthly data from 1999 to 2018, we find that the main drivers of housing price appreciation are from the demand side and include income level, money supply and inflation. The main contribution of this study is the quantification of the role of Mainland China's macroeconomic factors in housing price booms in Hong Kong. Our study shows that capital inflow from and inflation and recessions in Mainland China contribute to increasing housing prices in Hong Kong because the city's real estate is seen as a way to preserve asset value. These findings call for the need for control of capital inflow between the two economies as well as for stricter regulations against empty houses in Hong Kong.

This paper examines asset price and household income/consumption dynamics in a small open economy subject to terms of trade shocks, under two financial regimes. The first is a pure banking regime, in which firms borrow from banks for financing costs of labor, investment and intermediate goods for both the relatively riskless natural-resource traded sector and the non-traded sector. The second regime is more financially-inclusive banking/crowdfunding (BCF) regime, in which the households directly receive returns to capital from pooled lending to home-goods firms. Simulation results show that the banking regime better insulates the economy from negative shocks but limits the upside gain from positive shocks which would take place in the banking-crowdfunding regime.

This paper explores the internationalization and location pattern of Japanese financial service firms in East and Southeast Asia. During a period of prolonged economic problems in the Japanese domestic market and a turbulent period in Asia because of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the situation for these service providers has changed drastically. The research question that the paper seeks to answer is: what are the spatial patterns and underlying reasons for strategic location response in Japanese financial service providers in East and Southeast Asia in the post-Asian financial crisis period? The paper puts forward a set of potential responses that these firms can pursue to strengthen their regional competitiveness.

This paper applies Bayesian estimation to an open-economy Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model of Japan, to assess the effects of expanding government debt on interest rates, real exchange rate dynamics, and real sector performance. We find that the emergence of even a small risk premium on government debt will trigger considerable instability in the real and nominal variables. We show that a switch to an exchange-rate rule for monetary policy would considerably moderate the instability induced by a rising risk premium.

The paper presents an analysis of the economic relationship between the two most important economies in Asia. Over the last decades, the Chinese and Japanese economies have become more economically interdependent, a development which will, in the long run, impact the countries' political relationship. The paper seeks to answer the question: How can China and Japan gain from the current economic situation, further enhance their relationship and increase their synergies for regional economic development? Data on trade and Foreign Direct Investment are used in combination with primary data from interviews with Japanese and Chinese companies on how they perceive the current business situation and future potential. The result of the data analysis shows that the countries have much to gain from their economic interdependence. The firms see great potential in their respective markets but are concerned about political turbulence. Three possible scenarios for the future economic relationship are presented, including fierce competition on all markets and a leveraging of resources for mutual development between Chinese and Japanese companies.

Energy insecurity has been a critical challenge facing Asia's economic growth. This study constructs a comprehensive index for energy insecurity as well as examines its trend using a sample of 24 selected Asian countries during the 1990-2014 period. For this purpose, principal component analysis is applied to a series of 12 selected variables. The variables are standardized using different techniques including z-score, min-max and softmax normalization. Three different measures of energy insecurity are created accordingly. The empirical results depict the trend of increasing energy insecurity in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. On the other hand, the trend of fluctuating but recently improving energy security was observed in Hong Kong, Japan, Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, and United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, the trend of fluctuating but recently increasing energy insecurity was found in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, and Tajikistan. These findings are robust to all three measures of energy insecurity.

This research evaluates the impact of oil price shocks on oil producing and consuming economies; we used a simultaneous equation framework for different countries with business relations. As expected, we found that oil-producers (here, Iran and Russia) benefit from oil price shocks. However contrary to previous findings, they also benefit from the indirect effect through their trade partners. For oil-consuming economies, the effects are more diverse. In some countries, output falls in response to an oil price shock, while some others seem to be relatively immune. Generally, those countries which trade more with oil producers gain indirect benefits via higher demand from oil-producers. For instance, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, the US, the UK, and China get a negative direct effect and positive indirect effect from oil producing countries. This is exactly the result that we anticipated. India has both negative effects directly and indirectly and seems to suffer more in a positive oil price shock. For Japan, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey the results are reversed. They benefit from an oil shock directly and indirectly. © 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden.

This paper determines whether adopting the basket-peg rather than the floating regime is optimal for emerging market countries. Under the basket-peg regime, there is a trade-off between practical usefulness and welfare losses associated with capital movements across countries. We develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for small open economies to derive a simple basket weight rule. Although this is suboptimal, we find it practical and easy to implement. With calibration using Singaporean and Thai data for 1997Q3-2006Q2 and comparison among cumulative losses associated with the policy instrument rules, we show that a commitment to the basket weight rule is superior to other instrument rules under the floating regime for small, open emerging market countries like Singapore and Thailand.

This paper studies how population aging affects economic performance and the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies. We develop a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous households: workers and retirees. We demonstrate that an increase in the proportion of working population increases aggregate output, consumption, and investment by increasing total labor supply in the long run. It also increases wages and reduces the social security burden of the government. This paper also finds that the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies is weakened when the proportion of retirees becomes larger. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Sustainable and inclusive growth in emerging Asian economies requires high levels of public investment in areas such as infrastructure, education, health, and social services. The increasing complexity and regional diversity of these investment needs, together with the trend of democratization, has led to fiscal decentralization being implemented in many Asian economies. This book takes stock of some major issues regarding fiscal decentralization, including expenditure and revenue assignments, transfer programs, and sustainability of local government finances, and develops important findings and policy recommendations.