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Food safety concerns have become increasingly important challenge for agricultural trade. Sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures are often considered as major non-tariff trade barriers, which have surged rapidly over the recent decade. This study systematically investigates the impact of China’s SPS measures on Thai fruit exports. The panel dataset is constructed with 17 Thai fruit items for the sample period 2000–2018. Gravity equations are estimated to quantify the trade effects of SPS measures on the value of fruit exports from Thailand to China. The results from the sectoral analysis reveal that the restrictiveness of SPS measures has a positive and substantial effect on export volumes. This suggests that non-arbitrary and informative SPS requirements imposed by a large importing country would help facilitate the agricultural trade.

This study examines the relationship between global value chain (GVC) participation and workers’ wages and the disparities in wage benefits from GVC participation. It employs a pseudo-panel approach to treat endogeneity biases, utilizing pseudo-panel data constructed from the Thai Labour Force Survey, 1995–2011. The results show that GVC participation, on average, induces higher hourly wages through forward and backward linkages. Although forward linkages inclusively and positively affect workers’ wages, the wage benefits of backward linkages accrue to particular demographic groups. Therefore, government policies must be designed to promote GVC participation, particularly forward linkages, and support disadvantaged demographic groups facing disproportionate wage effects.

This article investigates the impact of regional integration on intra-industry trade in manufactures between Thailand and other APEC countries. The study uses pooled cross-sectional and time-series data spanning the period 1980–1999 at a 3-digit Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) level. After accounting for trade imbalance and following Thailand's entry into APEC, intra-industry trade in manufactures between Thailand and countries in Oceania and America decreased, while trade with other Asian countries grew marginally. Results indicate that, in the post APEC era, trade openness stimulated increased intra-industry trade levels with countries in Northeast and Southeast Asia, but decreased trade with countries in America.

Thailand's rapid economic development brought about remarkable wealth and poverty reduction over the past three decades. However, the problem of inequality continues to challenge Thailand's development process. The country has long been known for its concentration of growth in and around Bangkok. Despite that, studies on inequality focusing on geographical dimension have been limited. This paper therefore explores disparities as well as convergence in Gross Provincial Product (GPP)-per-capita over the past two decades. It also investigates growth determinants at provincial level. Finally, the disparities in poverty and the extent to which provincial growth and inequality affect poverty are analyzed.

This study assesses the impact of cash transfers to low-income female Thai students on improving upper secondary school outcomes, as measured by grade point average (GPA) and transition to tertiary education. Utilizing official records from a charity organization providing substantial cash transfers to secondary students and student records from participating schools, we find the transfers have no effect on improving recipients’ GPAs compared to non-recipients. However, the scholarship recipients are 22% more likely to transition to university education than non-recipients and the presence of scholarship recipients in the classroom increases the likelihood of female non-recipients to attend university.

Using unconditional quantile regression and an approach which allows the identification of the individual contributors to the gender wage gap and its over-time change, we study the gender wage differentials over the whole distribution in Thailand from 1991 to 2007. We also propose an extension of the single quantile decomposition to explore the origins of the distributional changes in gender wage differentials over time. A persistent sticky floor effect and declining gender wage gaps over time are observed. Aggregate decompositions using a reweighting approach show that most of the gap and changes in gaps are due to (changing) coefficients effect. Detailed decompositions show that within the (changing) characteristics effect, education contributes to the narrowing of the gap over the whole distribution, and within the coefficients effect age and the constant term are the most influential factors but with opposite effects.

This study investigates technological spillovers of foreign direct investment (FDI) in horizontal, upstream, and downstream industries on domestic manufacturing firms in Thailand, using firm level data from the 2012 industrial census conducted by the National Statistical Office. First, we measure total factor productivity (TFP) and estimate stochastic production frontier to find technical efficiency of firms. Next, we examine impacts of the FDI and other factors on the TFP and technical efficiency of domestic firms. The results provide no evidence on spillover effects of the FDI in horizontal industries on either the TFP or technical efficiency of domestic firms. While the FDI in upstream industries shows negative spillover effects, the FDI in downstream industries reveals positive and significant spillover effects on firms in all industry groups. Firm-specific characteristics such as age, size, availability of imported raw materials, location at industrial estates, and R&D activities all had positive effects on firms’ TFP and technical efficiency in total industries. Although export capability had a positive impact on total factor productivity and technical efficiency of domestic firms in the capital and technology-intensive industries, the effect was insignificant in the labor-intensive ones. The findings imply limited spillover effects of the FDI on domestic firms but highlight favorable effects of the openness policy (affecting availability of imported raw materials and exports), infrastructural investment (available in the industrial estates), and R&D activities. Incentives should be given to the FDI with vertical linkages with domestic input suppliers in order for local firms to gain the most from FDI technology transfers.

This paper applies business cycle accounting methodology to analyze the sources of aggregate fluctuations in Thai economy, especially during the recent severe recessions in 1997–1998 and 2008–2009. This exploration helps researchers uncover possible shocks and frictions that drive business cycle in a small and open economy within a minimal model set-up. Under this methodology, a fluctuation in aggregate output can be accounted for by exogenous time-varying wedges, namely efficiency wedge, investment wedge, labor wedge, government wedge, etc. This study found that the efficiency wedge is essential in accounting for aggregate output, consumption and investment fluctuation, while the bond wedge, which only present in an open economy setting, is a prime factor in accounting for movement in current accounts. I conducted counterfactual experiments to see what accounts for the output drop during recent recessions. I find that the efficiency wedge played a key role in recent recessions in Thailand, while the investment wedge was accounted for slow economic recovery after the recessions.

We investigate the factors that influence adoption of competition law using a panel of countries from 1970 to 2015. We find that in addition to development level, trading arrangements and peer pressure have also influenced adoption. The spread of competition laws adopted from Western precedents left a question regarding the extent they have been tailored to the diverse circumstances of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries. We document the nature, structure, conduct and scope of competition laws by comparing and contrasting the experience of the Philippines and Thailand. Our descriptive analysis reveals that the force and influence of the law are not entirely dependent on early adoption.

The countercyclical pattern of saving in Thailand in the 1990s and 2000s raised questions about household saving behaviors in the country. Using constructed pseudo-panel data sets from the Thai Household Socioeconomic Surveys (SESs) from 1992 to 2011, this paper estimates the intensity of the precautionary saving motive, measured by the coefficient of relative prudence of households in Thailand. By using a dynamic pseudo-panel approach to address concerns with regard to individual heterogeneity causing bias in estimation, the estimated relative prudence of Thai households is around 2, which shows a low precautionary saving motive among these households compared to other countries. Estimates based on disaggregation by demographic characteristics show that as a result of the government-assistance policy, older cohorts and those who live in the rural areas show lower prudence.

This paper investigates the application of option pricing to calculate the premium of deposit insurance in Thailand during the 1992-1996 period. In addition to applying the traditional Black- Scholes model, the barrier model of Boyle and Lee (1994) is examined. The barrier model takes the management (owners) action into account: the management (owners) may have a strong incentive to increase the volatility of the bank's assets, since this action increases the value of their equity. As suggested by the stylized evidence, most financial institutions in Thailand were "family owned", and there was inadequate corporate governance to prevent the incentive problems. The barrier model seems to fit the description of financial institutions in Thailand. The overall results show that the deposit insurance premiums of failed financial institutions are higher than the premiums of non-failed institutions. The evidence suggests that the option framework seems to be appropriate for pricing the premium: higher risk institutions pay higher insurance premiums. The results also show that the risk-based insurance premiums vary across time and on average are less than the premiums charged by the Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF).

The experiences of Taiwan and Thailand following the 1997 crisis of the baht provide evidence of the importance of the quality of the financial infrastructure of a country in its ability to deal with unstable financial markets. The very high quality of the financial infrastructure in Taiwan (together with its peripheral role in the crisis itself) enabled its economy to escape relatively unscathed. In contrast, a lack of sophisticated financial institutions and nonfinancial firms both triggered the crisis in Thailand and required the Thai economy to experience its full force.

This paper investigates the impact of foreign bank entry on Thai domestic banks by using panel data on 17 domestic commercial banks from 1990 to 2002. The study examines different factors affecting bank performance, including changes in the foreign ownership of banks, financial regulations, and market structure. The results show that an increase in the presence of foreign banks has led to a rise in overhead expenses, a decline in profits, and an increase in the interest spreads of domestic banks. In the short run, increased competition from foreign banks seems to have negative effects on domestic banks.

The vital factors which can facilitate the development of Startups and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in markets are the appropriate regulatory and policy frameworks. However, there is a difference in the frameworks which may contribute to different levels of development of startups and SMEs in different countries. This chapter thus focuses on the comparative study of the frameworks of selected countries to display their possible challenges in those countries. The chapter shows that governments in Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand adopt different regulatory frameworks which help stimulate the creation of startups and SMEs. It provides comparisons of the frameworks in those four countries, and also presents that there are challenges from these regulatory frameworks for startups and SMEs developing there.

Microfinance has been widely discussed as one of the rural development initiatives to distribute credit and financial services to the rural poor in Thailand since the mid-1970s. In 2013, approximately 67.2% of the country’s 7.3 million poor resided in the rural areas and nearly half of them lived in north-east region. Most of the poor are smallholder farmers who experience poverty and live below the basic standard of living. Thus, they require to access credit to invest in their farming businesses and for household consumption. The demand for short-term credit plays an important role in the rural households’ borrowing that is predominantly supplied by the informal lenders. However, during the past few decades, the proportion of credit from formal financial institutions have grown dramatically to substitute the informal credit in the rural areas. This chapter presents an overview of microfinance in Thailand including the types and characteristics.