Asian Economic Policy Review最新文献

{"title":"Comment on “Supply Chain Decoupling: Geopolitical Debates and Economic Dynamism in East Asia”","authors":"Keiko Ito","doi":"10.1111/aepr.12441","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aepr.12441","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ando <i>et al</i>. (<span>2024</span>) examine how the tightening of export control regulations by the USA in recent years has affected the exports of three East Asian countries – Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan – to China. Given that China is the most important trading partner for these three countries, Ando <i>et al</i>.'s paper focuses on a very important issue for the region.</p><p>Ando <i>et al</i>. closely examine the impact of the US Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR) on Japan's exports. Many interesting results are presented, but I would like to highlight two in particular. First, Ando <i>et al</i>. find that the strengthening of the US FDPR significantly reduced Japan's exports of related products to China. Interestingly, their estimation results (Ando <i>et al</i>.'s table 2) imply that it is the more semiconductor-intensive, that is, more high-tech, products that are negatively affected, while exports of less high-tech products may have increased. Since the US FDPR specifically targets high-tech products, the finding suggests that the measure is having the intended effect.</p><p>Second, in terms of the size of the impact, Ando <i>et al</i>. estimate that the reduction of Japanese exports to China due to the FDPR amounted to 3.3% of the total value of Japanese exports to China in 2019. Accurately measuring the impact of export controls is very difficult, and the 3.3% estimate may be a slight overestimate. However, compared to the increase in exports from Japan to China (in Japanese yen terms) from 2014 to 2019 of about 10% over the 5-year period, this 3.3% impact is too large to ignore.</p><p>While Ando <i>et al</i>.'s attempt to quantitatively examine the impact of export controls is an important first step, there are still a large range of issues that have not yet been addressed. I would like to highlight key issues that warrant attention in the future. First, it is very difficult to identify the scope of export controls and quantitatively measure the impact of export controls. For example, Hayakawa <i>et al</i>. (<span>2023</span>) also show the negative impact of the tightening of the US FDPR, but their estimate of the size of the impact (0.2%) was considerably smaller than Ando <i>et al</i>.'s (3.3%). Although the two results cannot be compared directly because of the different empirical methods and time periods, this difference in the results may partly reflect the difficulty of quantifying the impact of export controls. Nevertheless, it is worth trying to investigate the impact, and accumulating empirical results will help us get closer to the true picture.</p><p>Second, I would like to highlight the importance of micro-level studies. Export controls may severely affect specific firms that heavily rely on exports of the products subject to the regulations. For example, it has been reported that some Japanese firms that had heavily relied on exports of hydrogen fluoride to Korea experienced a large decline in exports and profits","PeriodicalId":45430,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Policy Review","volume":"19 1","pages":"80-81"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aepr.12441","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84240851","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Japan Center for Economic Research","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/aepr.12438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12438","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45430,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Policy Review","volume":"18 2","pages":"309"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aepr.12438","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50127859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Higher Education: Editors' Overview","authors":"Takatoshi Ito, Kazumasa Iwata, Colin McKenzie, Shujiro Urata","doi":"10.1111/aepr.12437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12437","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45430,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Policy Review","volume":"18 2","pages":"149-170"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50127860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"International Finance and Geopolitics","authors":"Barry Eichengreen","doi":"10.1111/aepr.12436","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aepr.12436","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Recent events, notably financial sanctions imposed on Russia by the USA and its geopolitical allies together with mounting economic and political tensions between the USA and China, have highlighted the role of geopolitics in shaping global monetary and financial relations. What these developments imply for the future will turn on how US–China tensions play out. In what follows I consider two scenarios: the status-quo scenario and the breakdown-in-relations scenario. The former would see ongoing but very gradual international reserve and financial diversification from the dollar to the renminbi. The latter see a bifurcation of the international financial system into two silos centered on the respective currencies, with highly disruptive implications for the global economy.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":45430,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Policy Review","volume":"19 1","pages":"84-100"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135478814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comment on “What Can Students Gain from China's Higher Education?”","authors":"Haizheng Li","doi":"10.1111/aepr.12432","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12432","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) use a unique dataset collected from a large-scale survey conducted by the authors to study college students in China. The data provide many interesting and new descriptive statistics about college students, such as their technical certificates received, their internship experiences, and so on. Their study examines how different mechanisms, including human capital, social network, and signaling, help explain the returns to a college education.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The human capital measures include grade point average (GPA), technical certificates, etc. Social networks are measured by Communist Party membership, participation in a student union, parental income and education. Students' skills possessed before enrolling in college such as the type of college enrolled in are assumed to be related to signaling.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;.'s main findings are: (i) human capital is the least useful in raising the starting salary; (ii) social networks are a strong predictor; and (iii) signaling matters. Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. suggest the need to reform the higher education system in China.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A novel contribution of Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) is their investigation of the channels explaining the labor market effects of higher education. It complements similar studies that use data from other countries with more sophisticated causality analyses. For example, Dale and Krueger (&lt;span&gt;2002&lt;/span&gt;) compare students who attended more selective colleges and those who had seemingly comparable ability but chose to attend less-selective ones and found that they obtained similar earnings in general. Black and Smith (&lt;span&gt;2006&lt;/span&gt;) measure college quality with multiple proxies and find that existing studies understated the wage effect of college quality. Zhong (&lt;span&gt;2011&lt;/span&gt;) finds that significant return gaps exist between high-ranked and low-ranked college in China.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) use students' wages for their first job to measure the effect of human capital. A potential issue with the wage for the first job is the quality of the job match. It is known that job turnover rates for new college graduates are very high. For example, Takeshita &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. (&lt;span&gt;2022&lt;/span&gt;) find that the turnover rate for new college graduates is around 20% within a year in Japan. In China, 34% of college graduates leave their first job within 1 year.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Therefore, the first job may not reflect a person's true human capital due to the potential wage penalty of the mismatch (Sellami &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;., &lt;span&gt;2017&lt;/span&gt;). This study is limited by the data, yet it would be helpful to discuss more of the implications regarding this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. also acknowledge, the three mechanisms that determine wages are represented by variables that may overlap for the different mechanisms. For example, the involvement in a student union may be related to their non-cognitive abilities, such as openness, a part o","PeriodicalId":45430,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Policy Review","volume":"18 2","pages":"307-308"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aepr.12432","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50142304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comment on “What Can Students Gain from China's Higher Education?”","authors":"Wei Ha","doi":"10.1111/aepr.12433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12433","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Over the past four decades, China has built up one of the largest higher education systems in the world which is no small achievement. The Chinese higher education system is very diverse and complex, and varies a great deal in terms of ease of access for students, the quality of teaching and research, and the returns to education. Therefore, summarizing its progress or the lack of it is a daunting task. Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) offer fresh findings on the returns to higher education in China and their determinants. Their main conclusions are that the returns to college education in China have stabilized after a significant rise and the relatively high returns are largely explained away by signaling and social networks channels as opposed to the human capital mechanism. However, Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) can be improved by talking to the broader Chinese literature and incorporating the institutional details of the higher education sector in China into its analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all, as Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) rightly point out in the beginning of their paper that the enrollment in Chinese higher education has experienced a 10-fold expansion since 1999 and the resultant system is very diverse and highly stratified. The elite colleges, 211 project colleges, regular 4-year teaching colleges and 3-year vocational colleges operate in utterly different orbits with the elite colleges catching up quickly with the leading universities in the world on many fronts. The expansion concentrated disproportionally on the lower-tier universities, and therefore drove down the returns to an education in these universities as well as the overall returns to higher education to some extent. Another paper coauthored by the lead author of Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;), Prof. Hongbin Li, clearly shows that the college premium for young workers declined while the college premium for senior workers increased over the period 1990–2019 (Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;., &lt;span&gt;2022&lt;/span&gt;). This trend is also evident in work of Chinese scholars, for example, Ding &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. (&lt;span&gt;2012&lt;/span&gt;, &lt;span&gt;2013&lt;/span&gt;). Although I understand the sampling is not necessarily representative at the different tiers and further analysis of the four groups of universities may not be possible, the overall conclusion of Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) needs to be qualified.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, the Chinese labor market is also quite diverse. Dual labor market theory would not adequately capture its complexity. Public sector jobs couple strong stability and high benefits with relatively low nominal salaries. The private sector mostly relies on salaries but leading firms can attract even graduates of elite colleges. Therefore equation (1) in Li &lt;i&gt;et al&lt;/i&gt;. (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) at least needs to control for the sector the graduates landed in. The same goes for the city/region/industries of choice as these greatly shape the kind of work–life balance college gradu","PeriodicalId":45430,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Policy Review","volume":"18 2","pages":"305-306"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aepr.12433","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50153499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comment on “Higher Education in the United States: Laissez-Faire, Differentiation, and Research”","authors":"Takatoshi Ito","doi":"10.1111/aepr.12431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12431","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;I read Urquiola (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) with a keen personal interest as well as an academic interest. In my 47-year professional life, half was spent in US academia and the other half in Japanese academia. From time to time, I have compared Japanese universities with their US counterparts. Table 1 is a summary of my experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, the Japanese research universities now are like US universities in the mid-1800s as described by Urquiola (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;). According to the 2023 Times Higher Education university ranking, the University of Tokyo, a top-ranked Japanese university, places only at #39 in the world.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Urquiola (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) explains how the leading US universities became globally leading research universities in the late 20th century, while they did not have such a reputation in the mid-19th century. There are interesting questions of why and how it became possible for them to make such a transition. Urquiola attributes the success of US universities to a “laissez-faire orientation,” namely, “thousands of institutions largely left to compete with each other, even if most enjoy some form of state financial support.”&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Urquiola argues that “selectivity appeared in the USA is not surprising from the point of view of economic theory” and that “economic models fully predict this in a laissez-faire educational market.” There are two mechanisms at work: a “peer effect” and an “information effect,” that is, graduating from prestigious schools carries information of a high caliber. In addition, “network” effects can be expected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The information effect here seems to be a variation of signaling theory (Spence, &lt;span&gt;1974&lt;/span&gt;). In a signaling model, high-caliber (high productivity) students are willing to do extra (possibly unproductive) tasks that incur costs, if the extra task is used to screen students and the cost of the task is negatively correlated with the caliber of students. If high-caliber (research-oriented) students can perform well in entrance exams (in Japan) or in the preparation of admission documents and course work in college (in the USA) more easily than ordinary students, then the entrance exams, admission process, and course grades can be used as a signal of high-caliber students destined to be researchers (and other high paying jobs).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Citing Epple and Romano (&lt;span&gt;1998&lt;/span&gt;) and MacLeod and Urquiola (&lt;span&gt;2015&lt;/span&gt;), Urquiola (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) predicts that a laissez-faire school market will have two kinds of universities: Selective schools with the highest prestige being small and in a strict hierarchy and a larger segment of non-selective schools. Most public (state) universities in the USA belong to the latter. The existence of two types of schools makes it different from Spence's original signaling model.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once a university has established its status as a top-notch research university, its reputation attracts researchers with excellent publication records wh","PeriodicalId":45430,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Policy Review","volume":"18 2","pages":"214-216"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aepr.12431","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50144117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comment on “Transforming Malaysia's Higher Education: Policies and Progress”","authors":"Cassey Lee","doi":"10.1111/aepr.12428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12428","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Investment in education is right as regarded one of the most important strategies for social and economic development in the long term. Historically, the private and social returns to schooling are higher at the primary and secondary levels compared to the tertiary level. However, as countries become more developed and wealthier, the returns to tertiary education could exceed that of primary education (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, &lt;span&gt;2018&lt;/span&gt;). As Malaysia heads towards graduating from middle-income status, human capital development is a key policy the country's Twelfth Malaysia Plan 2021–2025 (12MP, see Malaysia, &lt;span&gt;2021&lt;/span&gt;). For tertiary education, the goal is to improve the quality of universities. In this regard, Tham and Chong (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) provide a timely assessment of the quality and policy challenges to improve the quality of higher education in Malaysia.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A key policy challenge highlighted by Tham and Chong is how to measure the quality of higher education. As they rightly point out, the official performance indicators used such as use of selective international university rankings are clearly problematic given that the paradox of high rankings juxtaposed with under-employment of university graduates. Furthermore, they also opine that the implementation of quality assurance and accreditation systems have not ensured the quality of teaching in universities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In reflecting the challenges facing higher education in Malaysia, it is worth examining some of the key institutional and political factors as well as constraints that have shaped the trajectory of the sector in Malaysia. These include the impacts of affirmative action policies (the New Economic Policy [NEP], and its successor variants) in both student intake and faculty hiring in public universities. Ethnic (Bumiputra vs. non-Bumiputra and regional [Peninsular vs. Sabah and Sarawak]) dimensions continue to be emphasized in the 12MP. In addition, the effects of the use of Bahasa Malaysia (Malay language) as the medium of instruction at all levels of education continue to be debated. In the past, this language requirement in teaching had also limited opportunities for hiring foreign academics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The liberalization of higher education in the 1980s was partly undertaken in response to such policies. Furthermore, the subsequent internationalization of higher education created more space for the role of market forces which mitigate some of these policies. Although the emergence and development of private higher education have invigorated higher education in Malaysia, it has created a dualistic system that raises issues related in inequality. The issues of quality and inequality are intertwined. More studies are needed on the quality gap between public and private higher education in Malaysia and the extent to which it has exacerbated inequality. This has also implications of social cohesion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, the quality of higher education in Mala","PeriodicalId":45430,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Policy Review","volume":"18 2","pages":"261-262"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aepr.12428","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50120442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What Can Students Gain from China's Higher Education?","authors":"Hongbin Li,&nbsp;Huan Wang,&nbsp;Claire Cousineau,&nbsp;Matthew Boswell","doi":"10.1111/aepr.12426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12426","url":null,"abstract":"<p>China's higher education system has undergone a rapid expansion over the last two decades. By drawing on hand-collected data, we explore students' experiences in college and in the labor market post-graduation in the wake of this expansion. According to our data, the largest employer of college graduates in the labor market was the state sector, followed by the domestic private sector. To explain the returns to college education in China, we explore three mechanisms: human capital, social networks, and signaling. We find that human capital measures, apart from a student's college English test scores, cannot explain the college wage premium, whereas both social networks (for example, membership of the Communist Party) and signaling matter significantly. This seems to indicate that in China, connections are crucial for student success in the labor market, whereas the higher education system itself is more a system for selecting talented individuals than it is for educating them. Finally, students allocate their time accordingly, for example, by spending more time studying English in college than any other subject.</p>","PeriodicalId":45430,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Policy Review","volume":"18 2","pages":"287-304"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50153728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comment on “The Evolution of University–Industry Linkages in Thailand”","authors":"Kaoru Nabeshima","doi":"10.1111/aepr.12429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12429","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Many developing countries including those in East Asian region have been interested in the way to stimulate university industry linkages (UILs) in order to resume their economic growth and to improve their innovation capabilities, which are seen as a key to escaping from the middle income trap (Yusuf &amp; Nabeshima, &lt;span&gt;2007&lt;/span&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Intarakumnerd and Jutarosaga (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) focus on UILs in Thailand and examine how changes in the higher education sectors in Thailand have contributed to broadening the relationships with firms in key sectors in Thailand. They review the reforms implemented in the higher education system in Thailand and describe in detail various efforts that have been introduced to stimulate UILs in Thailand. The discussion of the higher education system is supplemented by a discussion of the research and development (R&amp;D) activities of firms based on the Thai R&amp;D and Innovation Survey and a detailed look at three strategic sectors for Thailand: the automotive, hard disk drive, and pharmaceutical industries. Intarakumnerd and Jutarosaga find that much of the interactions between universities and firms center around skill development and relative few activities focus on research. They conclude that UILs in Thailand remain weak, even though UILs have become more sophisticated and interactions between universities and firms have increased compared to the past.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;While Intarakumnerd and Jutarosaga presents the current state-of-affairs in terms of UILs in Thailand, it would be helpful to deepen the discussion relating to the following points.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, the paper could include more assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the instruments that have been introduced recently in Thailand to encourage UILs. A study by Brimble and Doner (&lt;span&gt;2007&lt;/span&gt;) identifies the lack of R&amp;D by firms, the lack of incentives and support for universities, and the slow bureaucracy as the likely causes for the lack of UILs in Thailand. From that time, according to Intarakumnerd and Jutarosaga (&lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;), the government has introduced a number of efforts to stimulate UILs. While some improvements are seen among universities in terms of more emphasis on research, the interactions between universities and firms are not as forthcoming as expected. More discussion on why firms do not utilize these initiatives, despite the fact that compared to the past more firms are engaging in innovation activities in general, would be quite helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, the paper could discuss the presence of multinational firms in Thai industries in terms of UILs in more depth. Thailand has been successful in rapid industrialization, mainly through foreign direct investment. In many cases, the innovation activities of foreign subsidiaries are conducted in the home country (or other “hot spot” locations), it is not necessary to conduct them where the actual production is located. According to Intarakumnerd and Jutarosaga, there d","PeriodicalId":45430,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Policy Review","volume":"18 2","pages":"285-286"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aepr.12429","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50136952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}