Benchmarking Development for Hong Kong and Beyond


Book Description

Developing countries and particularly African countries must not think that they are asking for charity by demanding development-oriented outcomes. Their demands are justified not only on the basis of the promise of Doha Ministerial Declarations and Decisions but also on any calculation of give and take in the multilateral trade negotiations. Developing countries, particularly African and least-developed countries (LDCs), are not free riders in the multilateral trading system. In fact they have offered more concessions than their developed country partners in the Uruguay Round and the WTO. Their concessions are not limited to binding themselves to stringent multilateral rules in new areas such as trade-related intellectual property rights (Agreement on TRIPS), trade-related investment measures (Agreement on TRIMS) and services (General Agreement on Trade in Services). Even in the area of market access their commitments go far beyond those of the developed countries. Hence developing countries should not be on the defensive. They have contributed and continue to contribute to the multilateral trading system, often far beyond their capacities and certainly more than their developed country partners.







High-Stakes Testing


Book Description

This book provides a detailed account of the origin, development, administration, revision and subsequent research findings on the benchmarking initiative from 1996-2016. It presents an overall assessment of the initiative’s impact on major stakeholders, predictions regarding the way forward, and implications for other countries, especially in South East Asia. In addition, the book discusses what the larger global community can learn from Hong Kong’s two-decade experience of conceptualizing and implementing minimum standard language requirements for teachers.




The Bond Markets Of Developing East Asia


Book Description

This comprehensive book provides detailed descriptions and analysis of the bond markets in eight East Asian developing economies: Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Drawing on the most recent data available, Emery assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each countrys bond market, concluding with comparisons of the eight countries bond markets. The book will be an invaluable reference for economists, policymakers, and all those interested in emerging capital markets. }Drawing on the most recent data available, this comprehensive book provides detailed descriptions and analysis of the bond markets in eight East Asian developing economies: Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Robert Emery devotes a full chapter to evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each countrys bond market. For each country, Emery describes the history of the bond market and identifies its key participants, the different types of bonds, and the current terms for bond issues. He also discusses the size of the bond market, the bond issuing process, trading procedures and the structure of the market, the clearing and settlement system, and fees and taxes. Finally, he lists the regulators of the market, current regulations, and bond rating agencies; assesses the markets past performance; and offers suggestions for improvement.Each country chapter is organized into a standard format, making it easy for the reader to locate and compare specific information. Emery concludes the book with cross-country comparisons of the eight countries bond markets. It will be an invaluable reference for economists, policymakers, and all those interested in emerging capital markets. }




Moving Health Sovereignty in Africa


Book Description

Today’s era of intense globalization has unleashed dynamic movements of people, pathogens, and pests that overwhelm the static territorial jurisdictions on which the governance provided by sovereign states and their formal intergovernmental institutions is based. This world of movement calls for new ideas and institutions to govern people’s health, above all in Africa, where the movements and health challenges are the most acute. This book insightfully explores these challenges in ways that put the perspectives of Africans themselves at centre stage. It begins with the long central and still compelling African health challenge of combating the pandemic of HIV/AIDS. It then examines the global governance responses by the major multilateral organizations of the World Bank and the World Trade Organization and the newer informal flexible democratically oriented ones of the Group of Eight. It also addresses the compounding health challenge created by climate change to assess both its intensifying impact on Africa and how all international institutions have largely failed to link climate and health in their governance response. It concludes with several recommendations about the innovative ideas and institutions that offer a way to closing the great global governance gaps and thus improving Africans’ health and that of citizens beyond.




Beyond the Bubble Test


Book Description

Performance assessment is a hot topic in school systems, and educators continue to analyze its costs, benefits, and feasibility as a replacement for high-stakes testing. Until now, researchers and policymakers have had to dig to find out what we know and what we still have to learn about performance assessment. Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning synthesizes the latest findings in the field, and not a moment too soon. Statistics indicate that the United States is in danger of falling behind if it fails to adapt to our changing world. The memory and recall strategies of traditional testing are no longer adequate to equip our students with the skills they need to excel in the global economy. Instead teachers need to engage students in deeper learning, assessing their ability to use higher-order skills. Skills like synthesizing information, understanding evidence, and critical problem-solving are not achieved when we teach to multiple-choice exams. Examples in Beyond the Bubble Test paint a useful picture of how schools can begin to supplement traditional tests with something that works better. This book provides new perspectives on current performance assessment research, plus an incisive look at what’s possible at the local and state levels. Linda Darling-Hammond, with a team of leading scholars, bring together lessons learned, new directions, and solid recommendations into a single, readily accessible compendium. Beyond the Bubble Test situates the current debate on performance assessment within the context of testing in the United States. This comprehensive resource also looks beyond our U.S. borders to Singapore, Hong Kong, and other places whose reform-mindedness can serve as an example to us.




Trade, Globalization and Sustainability Impact Assessment


Book Description

Trade liberalization, as promoted by the World Trade Organization (WTO), has become one of the dominant drivers and most controversial aspects of globalization. Trade sustainability impact assessments (SIAs) were introduced as a means of generating better understanding especially of the social and environmental impacts of trade liberalisation, and of making those impacts more consistent with sustainable development. This book takes a hard look at the experience of Trade SIAs to date, and the extent to which they have achieved their objectives and improved the outcomes of trade negotiations. It proposes several ways in which Trade SIAs could be made more effective, and illustrates these in respect of controversial sectors in which trade liberalisation has been implemented or proposed, including commodities, services and investment. Finally the book makes proposals beyond SIA through which some of the conflicts between trade liberalization and sustainable development could be more effectively addressed. Written by top researchers and experts on trade SIAs, this book is vital for researchers, academics, post-graduate students and policy makers working on any aspect of impact assessment, international trade or globalisation more generally. In addition, the book will provide a particularly useful background for those considering how the environment and trade interrelate at both global and regional levels, with some particular insights on climate change and trade policies.




Beyond the Headlines


Book Description




Correcting “Beyond the Cycle"


Book Description

This paper outlines an operational approach for incorporating the impact of asset price cycles in the calculation of structural fiscal balances (SFBs). The global financial crisis demonstrated that movements in asset prices can have an important fiscal impact. Failing to account for the fiscal impact of asset price cycles can encourage a pro-cyclical policy stance if temporarily high revenues are passed through into expenditures. In addition, over-estimating the SFB may lead to inadequate fiscal buffers when cyclical revenues eventually dissipate. The paper proposes an empirical approach to correct for asset prices and provides illustrative country results for selected OECD countries. We find that asset price cycles are imperfectly synchronized with the business cycle and are quantitatively significant with an average pre-crisis fiscal impact ranging from about 1⁄2 to 2 percent of GDP in the sample. For a number of countries, the pre-crisis fiscal impact of high asset prices was larger at about 4 percent of GDP.




Beyond Technonationalism


Book Description

The biomedical industry, which includes biopharmaceuticals, genomics and stem cell therapies, and medical devices, is among the fastest growing worldwide. While it has been an economic development target of many national governments, Asia is currently on track to reach the epicenter of this growth. What accounts for the rapid and sustained economic growth of biomedicals in Asia? To answer this question, Kathryn Ibata-Arens integrates global and national data with original fieldwork to present a conceptual framework that considers how national governments have managed key factors, like innovative capacity, government policy, and firm-level strategies. Taking China, India, Japan, and Singapore in turn, she compares each country's underlying competitive advantages. What emerges is an argument that countries pursuing networked technonationalism (NTN) effectively upgrade their capacity for innovation and encourage entrepreneurial activity in targeted industries. In contrast to countries that engage in classic technonationalism—like Japan's developmental state approach—networked technonationalists are global minded to outside markets, while remaining nationalistic within the domestic economy. By bringing together aggregate data at the global and national level with original fieldwork and drawing on rich cases, Ibata-Arens telegraphs implications for innovation policy and entrepreneurship strategy in Asia—and beyond.