Archive | December, 2012
Environment
Regional cooperation and integration
Miscellaneous
Urbanization can be good for the environment
Urbanization degrades the environment, according to conventional wisdom. This view has led many developing countries to limit rural—urban migration and curb urban expansion. But this view is incorrect. There are a number of reasons urbanization can be good for the environment, if managed properly. First, urbanization brings higher productivity because of its positive externalities and economies of scale. Asian urban productivity is more than 5.5 times that of rural areas. The same output can be produced using fewer resources with urban agglomeration than without. In this sense, urbanization reduces the ecological footprint. The service sector requires urbanization because it needs a concentration of clients.
Is regional economic integration enough? The search for ‘Wave 3’ growth
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” said philosopher George Santayana. The aim of this paper is to draw lessons from Asia’s supposed “growth miracle” by disaggregating when, where—and why—growth occurred to better understand the roles of exogenous factors versus domestic policy choices. Our thesis is that the post-World War II “miracle” growth shared by many regional economies was a result of a unique set of circumstances linked not to their “Asian-ness”—but to exogenous, geo-political, developments and, in particular, to the Cold War. The Cold War was a battle for ideological leadership in political and economic domains between two nuclear powers who grew to accept a status quo based on the principle of mutual assured destruction (MAD).
The rise of Asia and the new world order
The global economy is undergoing a fundamental change. Despite concerns over slowing growth in the People’s Republic of China, India, and Japan, and the possible dissolution of the eurozone, global economic growth is accelerating. How can this paradox be explained? If the global economy is shifting toward the more rapidly growing economies, then the world’s growth rate would shift toward the growth rates of the more rapidly growing economies. Thus, even if the growth rates of the PRC and India were to slow, global growth, which is considerably lower than that of both countries, would accelerate. The growth acceleration will lead to a new world economic order, associated with more rapidly growing countries such as the PRC and India, which are going to have a larger share of the global economy.
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