{"title":"Participation in global value chains and rent sharing at small firms in Vietnam","authors":"Nobuaki Yamashita, Doan Thi Thanh Ha","doi":"10.1111/asej.12348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12348","url":null,"abstract":"<p>It is well documented that firms that participate in global value chains (GVCs) are larger and more productive, maintaining higher profitability compared to those without such connections. This paper asks the novel question of whether higher profits being connected to GVCs are shared with employees in the form of better pay. We investigated this rent sharing, using a matched employer-employee dataset of Vietnamese small firms surveyed between 2011 and 2015. There is no evidence for the presence of rent sharing in GVC-participating firms. We take this as evidence that GVC firms provide both higher wages and insurance against wage shocks.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"39 1","pages":"75-97"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/asej.12348","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144264570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Martin Hofer, Tomas Sako, Arturo Martinez Jr., Joseph Bulan, Mildred Addawe, Ron Lester Durante, Marymell Martillan
{"title":"Exploring the use of satellite imagery and computer vision-based machine learning method to improve the spatial granularity of poverty statistics","authors":"Martin Hofer, Tomas Sako, Arturo Martinez Jr., Joseph Bulan, Mildred Addawe, Ron Lester Durante, Marymell Martillan","doi":"10.1111/asej.12349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12349","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Spatially granular poverty statistics can enhance the efficiency of targeting resources to improve the living conditions of the poor. Previous studies suggest that the use of high-resolution satellite imagery may be an alternative approach in generating granular poverty maps. This study outlines the methods in improving the spatial granularity of government-published poverty estimates using convolutional neural networks and ridge regression applied on publicly available satellite imagery, household surveys, and census data from the Philippines and Thailand. A convolutional neural network (CNN) was used to extract features of satellite images that are correlated with the intensity of nightlights. These features were then aggregated at the same level for which government-published estimates were available to estimate a prediction model for poverty rates. Results suggest that the adopted methodology performed satisfactorily in predicting lower levels of nightlight intensity for the specific years considered in this study. Additional preliminary numerical assessment also reveals that prediction accuracy may be enhanced by using random forest as an alternative to ridge regression. The use of proprietary satellite images with higher resolution may also improve prediction accuracy.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"39 1","pages":"98-129"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144264708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Power or information”: How social networks affect the self-employment decision of rural migrants in Beijing?","authors":"Jie Zhang, Jingyi Ye, Chenyu Meng","doi":"10.1111/asej.12347","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12347","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As non-financial resources, social networks have a pervasive influence on career prospects. However, among social networks, which relationships are most beneficial for self-employment? This study used survey data from rural–urban migrant workers in Beijing to examine the role of personal networks in rural migrants' self-employment decisions. Social networks were categorized based on the heterogeneity of occupational status. The analysis revealed that networks related to information exchange are more pivotal than those associated with the influence of migrants' self-employment decisions. Furthermore, social networks emanating from lower occupational status significantly decreased the likelihood of self-employment in individuals. Additionally, males and newcomer migrants received greater social support from information-related networks and were more likely to pursue self-employment. Our findings indicated that self-employed migrants earn higher incomes than wage earners, exhibit a greater propensity to settle in Beijing, and report higher satisfaction with their lives and economic status.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"39 1","pages":"49-74"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144264693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The differential effects of childbearing on household economic decisions: The contrast between the first and second child","authors":"Nana Chen, Yi Min, Hangtian Xu, Shuhan Chen","doi":"10.1111/asej.12346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12346","url":null,"abstract":"<p>China progressively relaxed its one-child policy since 2013, allowing families to legally have a second child. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies and applying a difference-in-differences event-study approach, we find that the family size outcomes are nonlinear. We find the maternal labor force participation rate drops permanently after the second childbirth, but only temporarily after the first birth. The first child does not significantly worsen household finances by compressing non-essential expenses, whereas the second child does worsen them due to the lack of room for further frugality. This suggests that fertility incentives, especially based on material factors, may be more efficient when the childbearing structure of families is considered.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"39 1","pages":"23-48"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144264692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Charitable giving under the behavioral influence of income inequality: Evidence from South Korea","authors":"Youngrok Kim","doi":"10.1111/asej.12343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12343","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The study analyzes the correlation between South Korean taxpayers' perceptions of income inequality and their giving behavior, using 6 years of panel data from 2017 to 2022. It focuses on perceived income inequality, based on the assumption that individuals are more responsive to a subjective inequality index than to objective inequality measures. The results are as follows: First, consistent with the theoretical prediction, the higher the perceived income inequality, the more taxpayers give. This trend holds even when controlling for the Gini index. Second, higher-income individuals who perceive income inequality as high donate more. Third, individuals who are more pessimistic about future income inequality donate more. Overall, the study concludes that subjective perceptions of income inequality increase the supply of individual public goods, consistent with theoretical predictions.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"39 1","pages":"3-22"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144264386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tech wars: Distributional consequences of global tech rivalry","authors":"Rod Tyers, Yixiao Zhou","doi":"10.1111/asej.12335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12335","url":null,"abstract":"<p>International competition over sophisticated tech is a modern feature of great power rivalry. Yet the automation delivered by this tech is a key source of rising inequality. While policy motivations stem primarily from great power political and defense competition, the automation has consequences for wider economic performance. We examine global economic consequences, using a six-region global macro model with multiple households, under Rawlsian, Benthamite, capital friendly, or GDP maximizing policy criteria. Tech drives are shown to deliver higher capital returns and more growth, and therefore to represent dominant strategies under all but a Rawlsian criterion, despite their exacerbation of inequality and low-skilled poverty. We then consider Gini-reducing fiscal interventions. These are shown to have few international spill-over effects and to be domestically attractive only under the Rawlsian criterion.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"38 3","pages":"289-340"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/asej.12335","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Analysis of the transformation of demand willingness for housing reverse mortgages in China based on a scenario simulation experiment","authors":"Wei Han, Bo Zhang","doi":"10.1111/asej.12337","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12337","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As the population rapidly ages, Housing Reverse Mortgages (HRMs) have emerged as a valuable addition to the multilevel pension insurance system, helping to alleviate the pressure on pension financing. However, the HRM market in China faces challenges due to the limited financial literacy among middle-aged and elderly residents; there is a “cognitive bias” toward understanding the mechanisms and benefits of HRMs leading to “insufficient effective demand.” This study empirically investigates the likelihood of changing the “demand willingness” for an HRM through a scenario-simulation experiment focused on HRM-related information disclosure. The findings include: (1) Up to 46.78% of the subjects' attitudes toward adopting HRMs shifted from “unwilling” to “willing” after receiving disclosed information, indicating that cognitive bias significantly impacts the insufficient effective demand for these housing products. The information disclosure experiment can correct the inadequate financial literacy to a certain extent, thereby significantly enhancing the potential demand willingness. (2) After the experiment, subjects with strong motives to bequeath their property to family members (referred to as “strong bequest motives”) significantly changed their willingness to adopt HRMs (“demand willingness”). This suggests that a clear, comprehensive promotional strategy can better align middle-aged and elderly residents' perceptions of the role of HRMs in protecting inheritances, reducing the impact of bequest-related considerations on their financial decisions. (3) Participants initially exhibiting lower financial literacy also demonstrated notable shifts in their demand willingness postexperiment. Access to easily understood, high-quality information appears to help older individuals recognize the potential benefits of HRMs, mitigating the negative effects of cognitive limitations on their decision-making. These findings highlight the importance of enhancing financial literacy and promoting a better understanding of HRMs among middle-aged and elderly individuals, which may effectively manage the challenges associated with an aging population and the pressures on pension financing.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"38 3","pages":"371-403"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Energy demand pattern analysis in South Korea using hidden Markov model-based classification","authors":"Jaeyong Lee, Beom Seuk Hwang","doi":"10.1111/asej.12338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12338","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Understanding energy demand patterns in the residential sector is crucial for improving energy efficiency through demand-side management. Load curve classification is a useful method for analyzing energy demand patterns. In this paper, we employ a hidden Markov model (HMM)-based classification to residential load curves in South Korea. We also investigate how the number of hidden states affects classification performance by allowing HMM to train with a different number of hidden states for each class. We compare our HMM-based method with several state-of-the-art models and find that it outperforms other competing models in multiple datasets. Additionally, we use the fitted HMM model to make inferences about the load curves, gaining deeper insights into energy demand patterns.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"38 3","pages":"404-428"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/asej.12338","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142435074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The evolution of Japanese real GDP components in the time–frequency domain: The disappearance of the investment accelerator effect?","authors":"Patrick M. Crowley, David Hudgins","doi":"10.1111/asej.12336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12336","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Understanding the interaction between national income GDP expenditure components is a key part of the study of the macroeconomics of any country. The general aim of this study is to explore this interaction between the GDP expenditure components in the time–frequency domain for the country of Japan, obtain some stylized facts and then compare them with those of the United States. The main result shows that the cyclical interactions between consumption and investment are typical of an “accelerator” effect and operate at several different frequencies, but that the several different cycles evident in the data phase out in the 1990s, once secular stagnation started to take hold. We hypothesize that Japan's investment drivers then changed to be dependent on the external sector by the 2000s. A secondary result is that Japanese fiscal policy appears to have been largely ineffective in terms of creating cyclical interactions with other GDP components.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"38 3","pages":"341-370"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142434998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to “The economic aftermath of Thailand's 2014 military coup: Evidence from the synthetic control method”","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/asej.12334","DOIUrl":"10.1111/asej.12334","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Suwanprasert, W. (2024). The economic aftermath of Thailand's 2014 military coup: Evidence from the synthetic control method. <i>Asian Economic Journal</i>, 38(2), 256–283. https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12333</p><p>In the first sentence of the abstract, the statement “This paper study the effects of Thailand's 2014 military coup on Thailand's economy using the control method to create synthetic Thailand, which represents hypothetical Thailand had the 2014 coup not occurred.” was incorrect.</p><p>This should have read: “This paper studies the effects of Thailand's 2014 military coup on Thailand's economy using the synthetic control method to create synthetic Thailand, which represents hypothetical Thailand had the 2014 coup not occurred.”</p><p>We apologize for this error.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"38 3","pages":"429"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/asej.12334","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141969405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}