Narrow Results

Economic behaviour observed in experiments and in people's everyday dealings is often at variance with predictions and explanations based on standard theory. The findings of systematic patterns of such economic behaviour provide significant opportunities to extend the usefulness of economics. However, like the hesitation of participants in economic experiments to give up their coffee mugs, economists appear reluctant to take advantage of these opportunities.

The focus of this paper is on competition policy and law in the ASEAN countries. The paper begins with a descriptive evaluation of competition policy in the ASEAN countries. We then look at the effect of economic structure on the probability of early adoption of competition law among the ASEAN countries after which the competition laws of the ASEAN countries are evaluated in terms of objectives, jurisdictional exception, horizontal agreements, vertical agreements, definition and abuse of dominant position and mergers. We find that the competition laws of the four ASEAN countries that have implemented competition law are not completely harmonized.

The trajectory of Singapore's population size and composition can be mapped out with its progression through the various phases of demographic transition from high birth and death rates in the post-war years to very low birth and death rates today, all within the context of rapid economic and social development that has taken place in the past 50 years. Population planning has been integral in Singapore's national development strategy, balancing the economy's needs for more and better qualified workers with social considerations such as the dependency burden and the integration of large numbers of foreigners in a global city-state. This paper considers Singapore's population and manpower planning policies, with an account of the country's passage through the various stages of its demographic transition, and how its working age population composition has evolved. Population and labor force policies are examined with specific consideration of the social, economic and political implications resulting from those policy choices. A final section considers the challenges for the future stemming from these demographic trends.

With China’s rapidly aging population, this paper constructs a policy model using overlapping generation (OLG) model and the computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling to analyze the second-child policy and delaying retirement policy. Our research findings suggest that considering the short-term effects, delaying the retirement age imposes a greater impact on the economy than the second-child policy. Its economic impact increases initially, but then decreases to a stable level showing a diminishing influence. In the long term, the second-child policy has greater ability to boost the economy than the delaying retirement age policy and its economic impact gets stronger. From an industrial output perspective, the two policies exert greater influence on agriculture, light industry, finance and service sector than on construction and heavy industries. From an industrial import and export perspective, the two policies have great influence on finance, electric power, and fossil energy more than they do on the agricultural sector. From a monetary perspective, the impacts are greater on household income followed by the government income and corporate income, respectively. The policies also make a bigger difference to fixed capital than to changes in deposits and loans.

An expansion of inbound tourism increases the demand for locally produced non-traded goods and services, thereby raising the relative prices of them. In the short run, the increase in tourism can bring benefits in terms of raising tax revenues, increasing sectoral employment and improving environmental quality. Nonetheless, in the long run, costs for the increase in tourism may arise. A tourism boom can cause ‘Dutch Disease’ in lowering capital formation of the non-tourism sectors. Moreover, the expansion of tourism can reduce foreign reserves of the economy. Therefore, how to balance the short-run benefits versus long-run costs is of concern to policy makers in attracting international tourists to the economy.