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5943 results in Economics: general interest

Page 76 of 298

  • Chapter Fourteen - The Oil Question, the Prices of Production and a Metaphor

  • Edited by Marcella Corsi, J. A. Kregel, Carlo D'Ippoliti
  • Book:
    Classical Economics Today
    Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    03 February 2018
    Print publication:
    26 January 2018, pp 189-200

  • Summary

    Introduction

    This short chapter is inspired by a certain scientific and biographical background of Alessandro Roncaglia: his theoretical stand—close to the English and French classical economists (called the “Classics” from now onward), Piero Sraffa and post-Keynesianism—developed from both sides of the Atlantic Sea, in addition to his personal and intellectual nearness to Paolo Sylos Labini. In particular, the subject at issue is related to his claim that the theory of value and distribution and the method of the Classics need a separate analysis of an economy with exhaustible natural resources—typically the oil sector (Roncaglia, 1983 and 1985), which is characterized by specific institutional and oligopolistic features. We shall argue that Sraffa's (1960, ch. 11) equations with land can be reformulated to determine the prices of production of commodities and the rent/ royalty paid for the use of oil, still preserving the level of abstraction and the method of given quantities adopted in the basic model. Instead, in the absence of additional assumptions that are alien to the classical theory of the prices of production, the same equations cannot determine the price of oil held in the ground as an asset. The present argument resumes a thesis advanced elsewhere by the author (Parrinello, 2004) and revisits the metaphor of the snapshot of an economy that Roncaglia (1975 and 2009) adopts for the interpretation of the Sraffian method of given quantities.

    A Sketch of the “Oil Question”

    Economists of different theoretical persuasions believe that the problem of the running down of oil deposits is often misplaced and misleading in most debates of economic policy and political economy as well. Such a problem of increasing scarcity—the “oil question”— can be traced back to the old “coal question” of William Jevons (1865) and to the more recent “limits to growth” (Meadows et al., 1972), which address a similar question related to the general problem of an energy shortage. Different sources and kinds of criticisms and defenses can be mentioned about this subject.

  • Chapter Eight - The Role of Sraffa Prices in Post-Keynesian Pricing Theory

  • Edited by Marcella Corsi, J. A. Kregel, Carlo D'Ippoliti
  • Book:
    Classical Economics Today
    Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    03 February 2018
    Print publication:
    26 January 2018, pp 89-96

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Alessandro Roncaglia has been analyzing Piero Sraffa's contributions and how they fit into the context of the developments of economic theory since the time of the classical political economists on. In particular, he has concerned himself with how the structure of Sraffa (1960) prices in Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities are to be interpreted in relation to both Sraffa's (and our) predecessors and as a contribution to modern economic theory. In his comprehensive volume on Sraffa in Tony Thirlwall's important series, Great Thinkers in Economics, Roncaglia (2009) identifies three major interpretations of what Sraffa has done and where he may have wished developments of his contributions to go: a Smithian interpretation, a Ricardian interpretation and a Marxian interpretation. Along with his mentor, Paolo Sylos-Labini, Roncaglia places himself in the Smithian stream. He identifies Heinz Kurz and Neri Salvadori especially in the Ricardian stream and Pierangelo Garegnani especially in the Marxian stream.

    While I greatly respect his arguments and provision of evidence in the public domain, I want to argue here that the Marxian stream is the most appropriate one, both for interpreting Sraffa's own views and inclinations and for providing relevant theoretical developments to aid our understanding of the structure of, and processes at work in, the modern capitalist world. In arguing this I am comforted by the fact that, for example, the late Krishna Bharadwaj, whose understanding of Sraffa and his works was second to none, Giancarlo de Vivo, the late Pier Luigi Porta and Luigi Pasinetti are in overall agreement with such a take on these important matters.

    Many years ago I published an exploratory and speculative paper, “Marshall, Sraffa and Keynes: Incompatible Bedfellows?” (Harcourt, 1981). Its principal objective was to examine the role of the concept of a center of gravitation in the contributions of these three great political economists. I pointed out that Alfred Marshall was trapped in a dilemma partly of his own making, partly because his principal method of analysis was akin to that of classical physics, while his “vision” of the society he was observing and analyzing was of an evolving organic system. The Mecca of economists was therefore biology, not physics.

  • Chapter Seven - Agricultural Surplus and the Means of Production

  • Edited by Marcella Corsi, J. A. Kregel, Carlo D'Ippoliti
  • Book:
    Classical Economics Today
    Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    03 February 2018
    Print publication:
    26 January 2018, pp 73-88

  • Summary

    Introduction

    I have often asked myself why Appendix D of Piero Sraffa's (1960) book does not mention Sir William Petty, though his works are abundantly present in Sraffa's library (see De Vivo, 2014). Maybe some of the friends working on Sraffa's papers will satisfy my curiosity.

    The question has not to do with the “corn model” but with the existence of an “economy which produces more than the minimum necessary for replacement” (Sraffa, 1960, 6).

    To my knowledge Petty was the first author to clearly spell out the importance of the existence of a surplus of necessaries (see below section 3). Whether it is made of corn, agricultural products, subsistence goods or basic commodities, the concept of a physical surplus is at the core of Sraffa's investigation. In Sraffa's Production of Commodities (parts 1 and 2), the physical quantities of both the inputs and the outputs are given and are not related to prices; this is a fundamental assumption. From chapter 2 onward there is also a physical surplus, and “the right-hand side of the resulting sum-equation (or gross national product), will contain, besides all the quantities which are found on the lefthand side (or means of production and subsistence), some additional ones that are not” (ibid., 6).

    This chapter offers a quick overview of the story of the role agricultural surplus and of the theory of wealth from mercantilism to Smith. Section 2 examines mercantilism, while section 3 deals with Petty and Cantillon. Section 4 examines the contribution of Francois Quesnay, and section 5 presents some elements of Adam Smith's view of wealth.

    Moreover this chapter provides an opportunity to examine the scope and method of the early political economists up to Smith. The classical political economists tackled the issue of the wealth of nations, and some notions they elaborated are still of crucial importance in today's debates on development economics.

Classical Economics Today
  • Essays in Honor of Alessandro Roncaglia
  • Edited by Marcella Corsi, J. A. Kregel, Carlo D'Ippoliti
  • Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    03 February 2018
    Print publication:
    26 January 2018
  • Classical Economics Today: Essays in Honor of Alessandro Roncaglia is a collection of essays that pays tribute to Alessandro Roncaglia whose research is based on Schumpeter's dictum that good economics must encompass history, economic theory and statistics, and therefore does not generally take the form of elegant formal models that are applicable to all and everything. In this direction, Roncaglia is inspired by the Classical economists of the past and becomes a model for present-day Classical economists. A perceptible family air imbues the essays: all the contributors are friends of Roncaglia and see his personality and his interests as a common point of reference.

  • Chapter Six - Turgot and the Division of Labor

  • Edited by Marcella Corsi, J. A. Kregel, Carlo D'Ippoliti
  • Book:
    Classical Economics Today
    Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    03 February 2018
    Print publication:
    26 January 2018, pp 61-72

  • Summary

    Introduction

    It is well known that Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727– 1781) was an outstanding polymath. He after all worked in many fields of thought, was a polyglot in his command over ancient and modern languages and was recorded in history as a sound administrator, fiscal reformer, major Enlightenment figure and skilled writer on applied and theoretical economics. At the 2003 Turgot Conference held at Caen and Lantheuil, many papers were presented on Turgot the translator, the political and moral philosopher, the sociologist and the philosopher of history, the linguist, the poet, the student of probability and, especially, the reformer, the lawmaker, the statesman and administrator and the profound economic theorist.

    Turgot's many biographers have also commented invariably on his broad scientific aptitude, his wide philosophical interests, his experiments in chemistry, physical and mathematical study and his abiding interest in history, sociology, philosophy, political science and political economy, both in its theoretical ramification and as an applied science designed to secure major reforms and improvements. These wider talents, on the exercise of many of which he left specific writings, major or minor, make him a generalist, an eighteenth-century “Renaissance man,” a true product of the Enlightenment who tried to understand all and to elaborate the mysteries of science—natural and especially social—in letters, memoranda, short papers and occasionally even short books.

    Turgot's personal library likewise demonstrates his enormous breadth of interests. As catalogued by Takumi Tsuda (1974), it is easy to indicate its scope by summarizing the table of division of the library by subject matter. Not surprisingly, given his early education and training, it contained many theological works and a substantial collection of works on jurisprudence. The last embrace much material on the laws of nature and of the people. Turgot's history collection ranged from ecclesiastical history to ancient history, modern history, national history (especially that of France, Germany, England and Spain) and literary history. The sciences and the arts were well represented. In the order of this table, they included philosophy, ethics, morals, economics, education and metaphysics, while natural history covered the literature of agriculture, medicine, mathematics, chemistry, pharmacy, surgery, astronomy and optics. Works on the arts covered architecture, painting, sculpture, music, dance and the military arts.

  • Chapter Sixteen - Adam Smith and the Neophysiocrats: War of Ideas in Spain (1800–4)

  • Edited by Marcella Corsi, J. A. Kregel, Carlo D'Ippoliti
  • Book:
    Classical Economics Today
    Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    03 February 2018
    Print publication:
    26 January 2018, pp 223-242

  • Summary

    Introduction: A Lost Text in the British Library

    After an unsuccessful attempt at creating a great library in his residence at Ashridge, Francis Henry Egerton, the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, in 1825 ceded to the British Museum a large number of books and manuscripts from a variety of French, Italian and Spanish authors, which he had acquired over a period of several years. Upon his death in 1829, he bequeathed a sum of 500 pounds to the library for future bibliographic acquisitions.

    This made it possible for the British Library to acquire the so-called Yriarte [sic] collection in 1835, which included several manuscripts from Bernardo de Iriarte, a Spanish politician and economist exiled in 1813 for having sided with the Napoleonic government after the French invasion of Spain and the “War of Independence” (Cotarelo, 1897). Iriarte died the following year in the city of Bordeaux without leaving any direct descendants, and his niece—his only heir—sold his manuscripts, which were added to the Egerton collection under the name of the Yriarte [sic] collection.

    Afterward, the erudite Spaniard Pascual Gayangos, who had established his residence in London, between 1875 and 1893 drew up a catalog containing all the Spanish manuscripts he had found in the British Museum's library (Gayangos, 1875– 93), an undertaking that allowed Aragonese historiography expert Eduardo Ibarra to select from that catalog those manuscripts that came from Aragonese writers, and he included them in an appendix to a work on social economic history studies in Spain (Ibarra, 1934).

    The two aforementioned works include a set of texts written by the Spanish author Juan Polo y Catalina, which contained a study on the factories and industry in Spain, written in 1804 but unpublished, together with statistics from the kingdom of Aragon and other interesting texts of an economic nature (Gayangos, 1875– 93, vol. 2: 128; Ibarra, 1934, 77– 78). The first of these texts, which consisted of 80 pages, was entitled “Introduccion a las descripciones historico-politicas de las Fabricas e Industria de Espana en la que se desentranan los principales puntos de la Economia civil sobre esta materia y se expone el metodo seguido en estos trabajos” (Polo y Catalina, 1804).

  • Chapter Fifteen - Europe and Italy: Expansionary Austerity and Expansionary Precariousness

  • Edited by Marcella Corsi, J. A. Kregel, Carlo D'Ippoliti
  • Book:
    Classical Economics Today
    Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    03 February 2018
    Print publication:
    26 January 2018, pp 201-222

  • Summary

    Forgive the candour of these remarks. They come from an enthusiastic well-wisher of you and your policies. I accept the view that durable investment must come increasingly under state direction. […]. I regard the growth of collective bargaining as essential. I approve minimum wage and hours regulation. I was altogether on your side the other day, when you deprecated a policy of general wage reductions as useless in present circumstances. But I am terrified lest progressive causes in all the democratic countries should suffer injury, because you have taken too lightly the risk to their prestige which would result from a failure measured in terms of immediate prosperity. There need be no failure. But the maintenance of prosperity in the modern world is extremely difficult; and it is so easy to lose precious time.

    I am, Mr. President

    Yours with great respect and faithfulness,

    J. M. Keynes.

    GDP Growth, Employment and Labor Income Share

    Assessing the Scenario: The Trend of Selected OECD Macroindicators

    The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forecasts do not show a favorable trend for European Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth. The OECD countries are supposed to grow by 2.5 percent in 2014– 15, while Eurozone growth is forecast to be about 1.4 percent, with Italy and Greece bringing up the rear. Even worse is the forecast employment trend, with a feeble 1 percent growth per year for OECD countries and 0.4 percent for the Eurozone, with Italy in the last group (the only country with negative growth). Thus, the OECD forecast for Europe is marked by a weak recovery without job increases. On the unemployment side, things are not better. As for the OECD countries, the unemployment rate is forecast at 7.4 percent, and the Eurozone rate is forecast to reach 11.5 percent. It is worth showing four further indicators. If we look at inflation as an indicator of the pressure of aggregate demand, we notice that in the Eurozone the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) show an average annual inflation rate of under 1 percent in the two-year period 2014– 15, with marked deflation in Greece.

  • Chapter Nine - Classical Underconsumption Theories Reassessed

  • Edited by Marcella Corsi, J. A. Kregel, Carlo D'Ippoliti
  • Book:
    Classical Economics Today
    Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    03 February 2018
    Print publication:
    26 January 2018, pp 97-112

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Underconsumption theories maintain that capitalist accumulation has an inner tendency to make demand permanently fall short of the increase in production. According to Michael Bleaney (1976), we cannot speak about an underconsumption view before the nineteenth century, because only Adam Smith separated consumption and investment expenses. Bleaney is partially right, but things are more complex. Such a separation already existed in the writings of other Enlightenment authors (see Perrotta, 2004, chap. 11), and more clearly in the physiocrats, who wanted a right balance between consumption and investment expenses. However, Francois Quesnay—like Pierre le Pesant de Boisguilbert and Richard Cantillon before him—still saw investment, exchange and circulation as depending on landlords’ consumption. What he lacked was the idea of accumulation as a steady growth of investments and profits in all sectors. It was only Smith who introduced this concept by opposing—rather than just distinguishing—unproductive consumption and investment. This changed political economy as a whole.

    Later, Smith's hostility to unproductive consumption and his unconditional support of investment raised doubts among underconsumption economists. But only a few, like William Spence, tried to revive the physiocratic approach (see below). On the contrary, Smithian followers criticized the physiocrats on this issue. J. B. Say ironically wrote, “Many people […] have imagined that to encourage consumption means fostering production. The Economists [the Physiocrats] seized this idea and made it one of the main principles of their doctrine.”1 Even more sarcastic was James Mill (1808, 75– 80) when criticizing Spence and the physiocrats for defending landlords’ consumption. Despite this, Jacob Hollander's (1928, lxxix– lxxx) idea of tracing back the underconsumption view to the physiocrats appears inappropriate.

    However, Smith's commitment for saving drove to neglect the importance, for accumulation, of consumption increase, and of the consequent increase in skill. About productivity growth, Smith only relied on the opposite process: division of labor. The idea that accumulation only consisted in a growing division of labor led economists to uncritically accept the first industrial revolution, where mechanization was decreasing the need for skilled labor and was pushing wages down to the subsistence level.

  • Chapter Eleven - On the Earliest Formulations of Sraffa's Equations

  • Edited by Marcella Corsi, J. A. Kregel, Carlo D'Ippoliti
  • Book:
    Classical Economics Today
    Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    03 February 2018
    Print publication:
    26 January 2018, pp 129-152

  • Summary

    Introduction

    When I was a student, I read Alessandro Roncaglia's illustration of Piero Sraffa's contribution to the theory of prices, and some years later it was on his advice that I went to Cambridge and had a rather quick look at some of the papers Sraffa had left to Trinity College. At that time, in 1996, my interest was limited to the lectures Sraffa had delivered in Perugia at the beginning of his academic career, but following Roncaglia's suggestion, I realized how rich and fascinating the large and multifarious body of the Sraffa Papers was. Roncaglia knew very well what I would have found—between 1972 and 1975, as recorded in Sraffa's diaries, he had met Sraffa about a hundred times, he had been discussing with him his own work and Sraffa's writings and had spent many hours in his rooms, studying and ordering his papers, under his supervision.

    Since that travel to Cambridge, much of my time has been taken by research on the Sraffa Papers, and what is discussed in this chapter is only one of the many themes enshrined in them. Indeed, following the very opening propositions of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, as summarized by Roncaglia in his 1975 book—“in the first instance Sraffa demonstrates that when ‘commodities are produced by separate industries’ in a system of subsistence production (‘which produces just enough to maintain itself ’), ‘there is a unique set of exchange-values which if adopted by the market restores the original distribution of the products and makes it possible for the process to be repeated; such values spring directly from the methods of production’” (quotation is from the 1978 English version, p. 4)— we are led to the focus of this chapter: was not starting an analysis of price determination, as Sraffa did in the first section of his 1960 book, from “an extremely simple society which produces just enough to maintain itself” (p. 3) quite an original departure in the history of economic thought?

  • Chapter Twelve - Normal and Degenerate Solutions of the Walras-Morishima Model

  • Edited by Marcella Corsi, J. A. Kregel, Carlo D'Ippoliti
  • Book:
    Classical Economics Today
    Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    03 February 2018
    Print publication:
    26 January 2018, pp 153-166

  • Summary

    A Controversial Model

    The Walras-Morishima model is here reconsidered in the perspective of the Cambridge Debate on the theory of capital. This is a preparatory exercise in a specific context. On the one hand, it is related to the attempt to demonstrate that the Cambridge critique concerned not only the surrogate production function but also general equilibrium as well (Garegnani, 2011; Schefold, 2008 and 2011). On the other hand, the contribution is related to the attempt to investigate the conditions under which a surrogate production function can be approximated despite the occasional occurrence of reswitching and reverse capital deepening (Han and Schefold, 2006; Schefold, 2013). I hope that a later work will build on the foundations laid here and that this focus will fit in with the interests of the group of friends of Alessandro Roncaglia who dedicate this Festschrift to him in appreciation of his distinguished academic career.

    Walras's model of capital formation has always been controversial (for an overview of the debates, see Roncaglia, 2005, 342). The observation that Walras's model of capital formation links up with the problematic of the production function goes back to Piero Garegnani (1960). A pointed application of Garegnani's analysis was made in John Eatwell's (1987) contribution to The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics on Walras's theory of capital: Eatwell endeavored to show that in general the production of only one capital good was compatible with normal profits on the cost of production and the availability of endowments in arbitrary proportions. But, with only one capital good available in the subsequent period, the system could not reproduce itself. He linked this insight to the broader claim that, apart from narrow exceptions, the neoclassical theory of distribution can explain the rate of return on capital only, if only one capital good is available. For the amount of capital and the rate of profit are needed to determine the cost of production in the long run and to derive normal prices, but normal prices also serve to measure the amount of capital as the aggregate value of capital goods.

  • Preface

  • Edited by Marcella Corsi, J. A. Kregel, Carlo D'Ippoliti
  • Book:
    Classical Economics Today
    Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    03 February 2018
    Print publication:
    26 January 2018, pp ix-x

  • Summary

    This collection of essays provides a tribute to Alessandro Roncaglia, one of the most important representatives of what has come to be a threatened species: the classical political economist.

    His work has provided insight into the joint journey of economic theory with economic history and its application to economic policy related to both the past and the present problems of an evolving economy.

    While economic history serves the classical economist as insight into the diverse theoretical development underpinning of economic policy debates, the focus is always on the objective of understanding the economy in which he/ she lives and works. The classical economist is thus bound to think that economic theory is “historically conditioned” (Sylos Labini, 2005): as social systems evolve, the appropriate theory to represent a certain phenomenon must evolve too. Therefore, plurality in methods, including history of economic thought, must be a deliberate choice.

    As Salvatore Biasco stresses in his contribution to this volume,

    At the base of a nonmainstream way of looking at the economy, from a descriptive and normative perspective, cannot be but social complexity, uncertainty and innovative dynamics. Through these lenses, the aggregate behaviour of the economy is studied as determined by constantly evolving endogenous events, which are fed by a number of driving forces: unstable and potentially explosive relationships; nondeterministic developments; a financial system closely interconnected to the real economy but also able to acquire an autonomous dimension; and a social dynamic that changes in parallel to the whole process and that at the same time affects it.

    These contributions in honor of Roncaglia's work follow in this tradition, dealing with themes that have characterized his work or that represent expressions of his personality, his interests and method. Geoffrey Harcourt, Heinz Kurz, Nerio Naldi and Neri Salvadori all deal with one of Roncaglia's major contributions to classical economics, that is, the presentation, interpretation and extension of Piero Sraffa's work on the classical theory of prices. Marcella Corsi, Carlo D'ippoliti, Peter Groenewegen, Cosimo Perrotta, Alfonso Sanchez and Gianni Vaggi all provide essays reflecting the great legacy of classical economists and the interpretation of their work, a permanent source of inspiration for Roncaglia.

  • Logistics Development in ASEAN: Complex Challenges Ahead

  • Siew Yean Tham, Sanchita Basu Das
  • Book:
    Logistics Development in ASEAN
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 January 2018, pp 1-36

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    Logistics is a key enabler for economic growth and development. It enhances efficiencies in supply chain activities and lowers transaction cost and time between producers or between producers and consumers. A seamless logistics system improves connectivity both within and across countries. It links a country's centre of business activities to the peripheries and helps to distribute the benefits of economic growth regionally.

    According to a market research report, the global logistics industry is valued at US$8.2 trillion in 2015, representing around 11 per cent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is expected to go up to US$15.5 trillion by 2023 at a compound annual growth rate of 7.5 per cent. Globally, road is the most widely used transport network due to its flexibility in operation and availability of door-to-door services. It accounted for 45 per cent of share in total worldwide logistics revenue in 2015. The Asia-Pacific countries, especially China, India, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Malaysia, led the global logistics market with 47 per cent of global share in 2015, though the market size of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France cannot be ignored. The global

    logistics market is highly fragmented with the top four players, Deutsche Post DHL, Ceva Logistics, UPS and FedEx, accounting for less than 15 per cent of the total market.

    With globalization, the logistics industry has come to play an increasing role in each country's economic activities. Multinational corporations (MNCs) are no longer producing their goods in one single country. Instead, they are slicing their production process across several countries based on the comparative advantages of each country. Some MNCs are outsourcing business activities such as logistics and distribution to other firms (or third party), freeing them to focus more on their core business. This functional fragmentation is making the logistics sector an integral part of the overall economic activities in a country.

    However, the logistics sector suffers from the lack of a common definition across countries. The U.S. Coalition of Services Industries defines logistics services sector as “the process of planning, implementing, managing and controlling the flow and storage of goods, services and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption.”

  • Foreword

  • Siew Yean Tham, Sanchita Basu Das
  • Book:
    Logistics Development in ASEAN
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 January 2018, pp v-vi

  • Summary

    The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

    The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

    The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

Logistics Development in ASEAN
  • Complex Challenges Ahead
  • Siew Yean Tham, Sanchita Basu Das
  • Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 January 2018
  • Growing urbanization, increasing trade and investment due to integration, and emerging new business models like e-commerce are accelerating the demand for efficient logistics in each ASEAN country. The logistics sector is inherently complex due to its scope, ranging from physical infrastructure covering four modes of transport, customs, and services. Each of these sub-sectors is regulated by different government agencies, leading to complex challenges in each country's logistics sector. Policymaking has a tendency to be done piecemeal rather than integratively, while a more or less fragmented governance structure impedes implementation. ASEAN liberalization commitments focusses on raising the cap on foreign equity, while regulatory reform remains untouched. Also, flexibility offered in these commitments allows for non-compliance. Going forward, developing seamless logistics requires ASEAN countries to first overcome their domestic challenges. Each country needs to develop comprehensive plans, and effective implementation of these is essential. Liberalization commitments should complement domestic reforms in each country.

  • Logistics Development in ASEAN: Complex Challenges Ahead

  • Siew Yean Tham, Sanchita Basu Das
  • Book:
    Logistics Development in ASEAN
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 January 2018, pp vii-viii

  • Summary

    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

  • • Growing urbanization, increasing trade and investment due to integration, and emerging new business models like e-commerce are accelerating the demand for efficient logistics in each ASEAN country.

  • • The logistics sector is inherently complex due to its scope, ranging from physical infrastructure covering four modes of transport, customs, and services. Each of these sub-sectors is regulated by different government agencies, leading to complex challenges in each country's logistics sector.

  • • Policymaking has a tendency to be done piecemeal rather than integratively, while a more or less fragmented governance structure impedes implementation. ASEAN liberalization commitments focusses on raising the cap on foreign equity, while regulatory reform remains untouched. Also, flexibility offered in these commitments allows for non-compliance.

  • • Going forward, developing seamless logistics requires ASEAN countries to first overcome their domestic challenges. Each country needs to develop comprehensive plans, and effective implementation of these is essential. Liberalization commitments should complement domestic reforms in each country.

Page 76 of 298