{"title":"The impact of compulsory primary education law on the educational attainment of children: Evidence from Vietnam","authors":"Binh Thi Thanh Dang, Trung Xuan Hoang","doi":"10.1111/asej.12321","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12321","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study examines the short-term impact of the compulsory primary education law (CPEL) on the educational attainment of children in Vietnam. This study uses the 1999 Vietnam Population and Housing Census and survival analysis to account for the right-censoring problem in the educational outcomes of children. The study found that CPEL reduces the dropout rate of children by 12%. However, the effect is minor, especially when compared with the impact of family income and parents' education. This finding is similar to those of other studies, suggesting that in addition to CPEL, other family income support and parent-oriented policies are crucial to improving children's educational attainment.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"38 1","pages":"118-147"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140297368","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":"Does the proliferation of smartphones reduce consumer search costs? The case of the Korean gasoline market","authors":"Bongseok Choi, Donghun Kim","doi":"10.1111/asej.12320","DOIUrl":"10.1111/asej.12320","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study treats the introduction of smartphones and access to the Korean gasoline market as a natural experiment, investigating how they affect consumer search costs. We estimate consumer search costs in different regional districts in Seoul and examine how smartphone proliferation affects search costs. Our findings indicate that the widespread use of smartphones reduced consumer search costs, and this reduction was more significant in districts with higher competition across firms. We can also infer that reduced search costs narrowed the market's dispersion of prices and markups.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"38 2","pages":"153-176"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140297536","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":"Family planning and fertility inequality: Evidence from the abolition of China's one-child policy","authors":"Nana Chen, Hangtian Xu, Yang Xu","doi":"10.1111/asej.12319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12319","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study takes China's one-child policy (OCP)—a widely known policy intervention for family planning—as an example to illustrate that an income-based penalty scheme for above-quota births may cause fertility inequality. A couple can legally have only one child under the OCP, and those who exceed the quota are subject to fines. To ensure that this penalty scheme does not biasedly affect only low-income people who are relatively more sensitive to fines of a certain amount, it was designed to be income-based, which makes the perceived cost of the rich equal to that of the poor. However, we find that due to the limited liability nature of the financial penalty, it unintentionally created fertility inequality that favors the poor. Relying on city-year-level panel data, we find that this mechanism partly explains the lower birth rates in rich cities in the OCP era; the gap narrowed rapidly after the OCP abolition.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"38 1","pages":"86-117"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140297354","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":"Did economic cooperation encourage trade in essential medical goods? Empirical evidence from the Asia–Pacific during COVID-19","authors":"Rahul Sen, Sanchita Basu Das","doi":"10.1111/asej.12317","DOIUrl":"10.1111/asej.12317","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Our paper empirically investigates the role of economic cooperation involving trade in coronavirus disease (COVID-19)-related essential medical goods—vaccines and their value chains, personal protective equipment, and diagnostic test kits—across 29 Asia and the Pacific economies. The paper incorporates vaccines and their global value chain products trade for the first time in the empirical literature. We further investigate whether trade facilitation, proxied by membership in regional trade agreements (RTAs), can help mitigate any adverse impact on trade in essential medical goods, applying a structural gravity framework. The results confirm that while trade is critical for Asian economies, its nature differs. Low-income economies are largely dependent on imports, whereas selected middle- and high-income economies are part of two-way trade and engaged in the low end of the vaccine value chain. We find that the onset of the pandemic has hurt exports of these goods. This adverse effect is found to be lowered for economies engaged in RTAs. This emphasizes the role of governments in committing to RTAs and implementing trade facilitation measures.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"38 1","pages":"35-60"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/asej.12317","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140166614","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":"Does economic self-interest determine public attitudes toward immigrants? An econometric case study in Japan","authors":"Ana Maria Takahashi, Shingo Takahashi","doi":"10.1111/asej.12318","DOIUrl":"10.1111/asej.12318","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine two economic self-interest hypotheses regarding the determinants of public attitudes toward immigrants: (1) the labor market hypothesis, which states that the employment and wage impacts of immigration determine the public attitudes, and (2) the welfare state hypothesis, which states that natives hold negative perceptions of immigrants due to concerns that they may strain the country's welfare budget. The first hypothesis predicts that natives' education will affect pro-immigrant attitudes more positively when immigrants come from lower income countries. The second hypothesis predicts that natives' income affects the pro-immigrant attitudes more negatively when immigrants come from lower income countries. We use the Japanese General Social Survey, which asks respondents' tolerance toward immigrants from different countries, allowing us to control for unobserved individual characteristics through a method akin to the fixed effect estimation. Our results indicate no difference in the effects of education and income on pro-immigrant attitudes regardless of whether immigrants come from high- or low-income countries. We conclude that economic self-interest does not explain Japanese public attitudes toward immigrants. We discuss the policy implications about how to improve public attitudes toward immigrants.</p>","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"38 1","pages":"61-85"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140166510","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":"CALL FOR PAPERS AND PRELIMINARY INFORMATION","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/asej.12311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12311","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"12 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138948492","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":"Income volatility in adolescence and university enrollment: The case of South Korea","authors":"Bo‐hui Kwon, Gyeahyung Jeon","doi":"10.1111/asej.12312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12312","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the relationship between parental income volatility and children's university enrollment. It measures parental income instability using the following indicators: (1) transitory income volatility, (2) standard deviation of the arc percent change, and (3) coefficient of variation. These metrics are derived from the total household income data collected from the child's first year of middle school through the third year of high school. Additionally, this study investigates the impact of income trends by analyzing the regression coefficient obtained by regressing total household income against the father's age. An investigation of individuals born between 1986 and 1998, who graduated from general high school, reveals an negative correlation between parental income instability/trends and the likelihood of children enrolling in a 4‐year university. However, this correlation is only statistically significant for low‐income households. These findings imply that despite similar average income levels, households with high income volatility in the lower‐income group are less likely to make adequate educational investments in their children.","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":" 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138963011","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":"Individual tourist expenditures in Japan during the inbound tourism boom period (2015–2017): Empirical evidence from micro survey data","authors":"Yoichi Matsubayashi, Yoshihisa Inada","doi":"10.1111/asej.12314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12314","url":null,"abstract":"This study empirically examines the characteristics of demand generated by inbound tourism (inbound demand) in Japan in the 2010s using individual data from the Consumption Trend Survey for Foreigners Visiting Japan. This is the first study to investigate the detailed characteristics of inbound consumption during Japan's inbound boom period using individual micro survey data. One of the main findings is that household income and the exchange rate significantly affect inbound demand. This is especially true for inbound demand by visitors from Asian countries, whose main purpose for visiting Japan is shopping. Another main finding is that visa relaxation effectively increases the number of tourists from China. The third finding is that the payment environment in Japan, including the use of credit cards, has a significant impact on inbound demand. These findings provide an in‐depth insight into inbound demand as a potential engine for future economic growth in Japan.","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":" 1199","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138960116","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":"Does outward foreign direct investment improve the performance of domestic firms? Case of Korea","authors":"Soomin Han, Sunghyun Kim","doi":"10.1111/asej.12315","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12315","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we use firm-level data in Korea from 2010 to 2019 to analyze whether outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) affects the productivity of domestic firms, known as reverse knowledge spillovers. Using propensity score matching and difference-in-difference regressions, we verify that OFDI improves the productivity of parent companies. Considering the characteristics of OFDI and the parent company, these positive effects become greater when (1) parent company's absorptive capacity (technology level) is high, (2) OFDI is in the M&A form, and (3) OFDI is toward developed countries. In addition to these direct effects, we investigate whether OFDI improves the productivity of other domestic firms within and across industries, known as horizontal and vertical spillovers. The results demonstrate strong evidence of positive vertical spillovers but not horizontal spillovers. These evidence provide important policy implications about the specifics of outward direct investment that are beneficial to capital-exporting countries.","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138742132","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 synchronization between Korea's and Japan's business cycles","authors":"Keun Yeong Lee","doi":"10.1111/asej.12313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12313","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the evolution of the dynamic interactions between Korea's and Japan's business cycles. The logarithmic industrial production is first decomposed into trends and cycles using bounceback models. The estimation results of the two-state Markov switching model show that the synchronization coefficient of Korea–Japan is positive and time-varying. However, according to the estimation results of the heteroscedasticity-based VAR model, the Japanese business cycle shock has a positive effect on the contemporaneous Korean business cycle, but not vice versa. Based on these results, I estimate a TVP-VAR model assuming Cholesky decomposition and find that Japanese upward shocks do not have positive impacts on the Korean business cycle in the period before the global financial crisis or the period after the global financial crisis and before the COVID-19 outbreak. The response of Korea to the Japanese shock is smaller in the three-variable TVP-VAR compared to the two-variable TVP-VAR without the United States. The Korean business cycle upward shock also has a similar effect on the Japanese business cycle, albeit smaller, depending on the period. Overall, the size of the response seems to be closely related to global events as well as changes in trade, FDI, and political conditions between two countries.","PeriodicalId":45838,"journal":{"name":"Asian Economic Journal","volume":"140 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138741861","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}