This study examines COVID‐19 pandemic effects on the stock market and exchange rate of South Korea. With daily data from January 2, 2019 to August 31, 2020, we show that a new infection spike increases stock price index volatility and decreases foreign investors' holdings of domestic stocks, and indirectly leads to the depreciation of the South Korean won. We indicate that investors may have repurchased

This study empirically investigates how much economic and social activities were decreased by the implementation of lockdown policies during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic. We measure the magnitude of those activities using nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions. Our observations include daily NO2 emissions in 173 countries from January 1 to July 31, 2020. Our findings can be summarized

We investigate the impacts of COVID‐19 on global value chains by examining bilateral trade in finished machinery products from January to June in both 2019 and 2020. We use the numbers of COVID‐19 cases and deaths as measures of the impact of the pandemic. Specifically, we investigate how these impacts affect value chains in three scenarios—countries that import finished machinery products, countries

We explore the factors associated with the savings choice among bank accounts, informal savings groups, and cash savings at home using primary data collected from low‐income production workers in cut‐flower farms in Ethiopia. A unique contextual feature of our sample is that workers have full access to banks as well as ROSCAs, which allow us to focus on the demand side of saving methods. We find that

We examine the role of spatial spillovers in economic growth for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We explicitly model spatial interactions that may arise from geography, bilateral trade, or institutional similarities, and ask how much they are likely to matter for growth externalities and spillover effects. We find that the economic growth of a MENA country is positively affected by

This study discusses political and electoral reasons for the allocation of intergovernmental transfers in a federal state. We tested the influence of political alignment with the federal government and deputies, and the effects of elections and changes in alliance status upon Brazilian discretionary transfers. We performed a panel data analysis encompassing 2,856 municipalities from 1999 to 2011. The

I BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE Vietnam has experienced a dramatic transition to a market‐based economy, high economic growth, and globalization since the mid‐1980s. As a result, many new types of economic opportunities have emerged, especially since 2000. During this period, social inequality in Vietnam appears to be greater than the published statistics indicate. Although the Gini

Literature on the corporate elite in transitional economies has focused on the elite's political backgrounds. However, the evolution of the corporate sector amidst decades of transition in these economies suggests that research needs to go beyond origins to focus on career pathways. Adopting a career history analysis, this study constitutes the first systematic attempt to empirically analyze career

This paper examines factors affecting income inequality in rural Vietnam with a special focus on the Mekong Delta. A case study reveals that there is heterogeneity in the factors of rural inequality at the commune level. While the inequality in one survey commune correlates with nonagricultural income rather than landholdings, the inequality in the other survey commune is determined by landholdings

Previous studies on collective bargaining have largely been conducted in developed countries where trade unions are relatively independent from employers and government and have the necessary capacity for bargaining. In the absence of market institutions that support trade unions' independence and capacity to bargain, the role of trade unions could be different. Using employee‐level data with firm's

A persistent public–private sector difference in returns to skills is one sign that Vietnam's transition from command to market economy remains incomplete. Matching this is a large gap in post‐compulsory education enrollments, favoring children from families with members employed by government or state enterprises. We compare that gap between 2004 and 2014, a decade during which Vietnam experienced

This paper examines whether exporting activity contributes to the promotion of creative destruction and the upgrading of a plant's product portfolio. We first present evidence that exporters tend to produce, on average, products with higher attributes than non‐exporters. Next, we find evidence that exporting improves a plant's average product attributes, utilizing the propensity score difference‐in‐difference

This paper empirically examines the effects of domestic transportation costs on product prices in an archipelagic country, namely, Indonesia. Specifically, we investigate the province‐level price of televisions. Our analysis reveals that maritime transportation is more expensive than land transportation. For example, a 1% increase in distance in maritime and land transportation increases the price

Factory Asia, supply chains in Asian countries, is a center of global manufacturing. Over the last decade, Asian multinational enterprises have become a significant part of Factory Asia. In this paper, we examine the boundaries of Korean firms in Asia. More specifically, we test the predictions of property rights theory for cross‐border vertical integration, using firm‐level data from Korean multinational

This paper investigates the economic growth experiences of middle‐income economies over the period 1960–2014 focusing on two groups of countries. The “convergence success” group includes middle‐income economies which have graduated to a high‐income status or have achieved rapid convergence progress. When an economy in the “nonsuccess” group experienced growth deceleration and failed to advance to a

Rainfall shocks to the agricultural sector can pull children into agricultural work and/or household chores. This is problematic because both forms of child work are potentially precarious. This study examines the relationship between rainfall deviations and child labor for rural households in Vietnam using panel data covering the period 2006–14. We classify child labor into agricultural and nonagricultural

Rural handwoven cloth from Laos came on to the market after the country’s economic liberalization in 1986. Though relational contracting is a major type of transaction in the cloth market, spot transactions and the workshop system also play a significant role. Relational contracting in the Lao cloth market has three distinct types: putting‐out, yarn‐on‐credit, and advacne‐order contracts. This paper

This paper quantifies the effects of both import and export varieties on a nation's terms of trade. Using the most disaggregate trade data (HS 10 digit) for South Korea over the period 1992–2015, I find that the growth in import variety caused a drop in the import price index by 2.44% per year and the growth in export variety caused a rise in the export price index by 1.46% per year. I identify that

This article aims to examine three prevailing theories of political change—modernization theory, new structuralist theory, and value change theory—by examining the case of Singapore. The article focuses on the effects of three socioeconomic and demographic attributes—education, income, and generation—on people's preferences regarding dominant party rule. Using data from postelection surveys conducted

The paper estimates the wage gap between employees with different contract types in Turkey. We first employ a quantile regression method and then decompose wage differentials along the distribution. Our results indicate that nonpermanent contract holders are more common among the low‐skilled and low‐wage group. The findings imply a non‐monotone pattern in Turkey where both sticky floor and glass ceiling

By applying a recently developed econometric technique, the synthetic control method (SCM), this paper empirically assesses the growth effect of financial liberalization in the presence of financial crises for the so‐called Tiger Cub Economies over the period 1975 to 2002. The outcomes of the SCM analyses show that financial liberalization exerted a significant growth effect in Indonesia, Malaysia

In this paper, we identify the role of religious practices on individual outcomes by examining if bathing in polluted river water for religious reasons affects the likelihood of missing days at work. To exploit the relationship, we use a primary survey (N = 1,200) of the residents of Kathmandu Valley, Nepal on their Bagmati River water usage. Probit and negative binomial estimation strategies reveal

This paper studies the decomposition of the gender earnings gap in the Brazilian labor market using microdata from the 2010 Brazilian census. Counter‐intuitively we find that the gender earnings gap in favor of males widens with increased GDP per capita. Firstly, we find that females present higher schooling than males, which is consistent with the higher return to schooling among females. Secondly

The development of vacant land may be seen from a real options perspective—owners of vacant land have the incentive to delay developing the land and keep their options open (keep the lands undeveloped) if they believe that future development will yield higher value. We investigate whether there is speculative behavior with regard to vacant land development in Malaysia. Using samples of 254 vacant plots

This paper analyzes productivity growth and its sources in the Indonesian manufacturing sector during the post‐Asian financial crisis period. Based on a plant‐level panel dataset over the period 2001–9, we find meager total factor productivity (TFP) growth in this country's manufacturing industries, merely achieving average annual growth of 0.03%, while TFP growth varies significantly across industries

This study examines whether caste affiliation influences the ability to obtain credit from institutional sources. We employ Fourth All India Census of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises 2006–2007 data to empirically verify this relationship. We conduct an econometric analysis of loan outcomes by the caste affiliation of the firm owner and observe that firms owned by socially disadvantaged groups have

While the birth of later‐born girls seems least welcome in India, where gender discrimination persists, birth order and sibling sex composition effects among surviving children are less known. The current study investigates whether later‐born girls are discriminated from their siblings once children survive up to primary school age in India. Examining the effects on test scores reveals that there is

We use a narrative approach to study the effects of protests on agents’ expectations. The “protest shocks” in the case of our study arose from Chile's student demonstrations. The demonstrations, led by university and secondary students, raised demands related to greater involvement of the state in the funding, provision, and regulation of the education sector. We find a negative response in relation

More often than not, manufacturing industries are clustered in small areas in developing economies of Asia and sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). While agglomeration economies arising from low transaction costs are a clear advantage of industrial clusters, a drawback is the ease of imitation, which leads to the gap between social and private benefits of innovation. An important observation is that multifaceted

Large and productive metropolitan areas play a growing role in the working of developed and emerging economies alike. This paper surveys the recent contributions of urban economics, highlighting the role of external increasing returns—called agglomeration economies in the context of a city, which are key in the development and functioning of large, prosperous cities. One critical feature of these mechanisms

This study examines the role of exports in the transmission of horizontal and vertical spillovers of foreign direct investment for the Turkish manufacturing industry by using firm‐level data. Our objective is to test whether the export capacity of firms is one of the determinants of the occurrence of the horizontal and vertical spillovers generated by foreign direct investment. In order to determine

Transnational investments in farmland in developing economies are recent and controversial. While they bring developmental opportunities including capital deepening, new technology, and employment opportunities, there are also concerns about the dislocation of local farmers and insufficient compensation for land use. This paper investigates how these seemingly conflicting effects interact in the process