How can we map the zones of armed conflicts? Kikuta (2021) applied a machine learning method that flexibly accounts for various shapes of conflict zones and made a new open dataset—wzone—available for all countries for 1989–2019. The new dataset helps us better answer important questions about armed conflicts such as what their environmental impacts are. In fact, while Daskin and Pringle (2018) suggest that armed conflicts have devastating impacts on biodiversity, I do not find such a large impact with the wzone dataset. This finding implies that we need to understand “where” armed conflicts occur to answer “why” they occur. Moreover, the new method can potentially be applied to other mapping exercises such as for crime zones and the spread of infectious diseases.

This article overviews the patterns of technology accumulation by firms in the industrial robotics industry in China. To analyze the technological characteristics of the firms, I measure technological distances between the firms based on their patent applications. First, I find that Chinese firms move technologically closer to a first-mover firm to some degree. Second, they tend to develop both core and peripheral technologies to enhance the basic functions of technologies and product sophistication, respectively. These patterns represent the process through which the firms specialize in their new business.

When countries face adverse economic shocks, economic agencies (i.e., firms and governments) are expected to mitigate the negative impact. This study (Hashiguchi et al. 2021) examines how countries’ production and demand patterns change when tackling shocks, arguing that the answer depends on their resilience to economic shocks. This study uses the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s annual Inter-Country Input–Output tables from 1995 to 2011 to investigate how country-level final demand shocks relate to production and demand patterns changes. We found that, during the 2009 global economic crisis triggered by the burst of the US housing bubble, countries were more resilient to negative shocks if they could prop up the economy through the domestic service sectors instead of domestic goods and foreign sectors. The substitutability between goods and service sectors and domestic and foreign sectors is essential for understanding the potential risk to a country’s domestic economy from shocks abroad, including economic, environmental, health-related, or political.

More than a hundred countries have implemented a minimum wage. In developed countries, proponents and opponents of the policy have debated the issue of the minimum wage's effect on employment using a large amount of evidence and high-quality data. However, we do not have much evidence for developing countries. After reviewing the issue's background, we will examine a recent study in Indonesia that used longitudinal manufacturing firm data from 1994 to 2015. The study finds a negative effect of minimum wage increases on employment in the formal sector by comparing manufacturing firms with higher minimum wages after unexpected decentralization in 2001 to firms with lower ones.

Dowry is the transfer of cash, jewelry, and other valuable assets from the bride’s family to the groom’s family at the time of marriage. Dowry is prohibited in India and Bangladesh and restricted in Pakistan. However, these legal measures are not effective; in fact, the practice of dowry is widespread in South Asian countries. It is my argument that people are incentivized to continue observing the seemingly gender-discriminatory practice of dowry, despite its illegality. Simply banning dowry may lead to unexpected negative effects on women’s welfare. Dowry will likely only disappear when it is viewed as unnecessary. Women’s empowerment, specifically through participation in paid-work and guarantees of property rights, may be the key to discouraging the practice.

Predominant party systems (PPSs) are quite common, but relatively little attention has been paid to this type of democracy. Nearly half of consolidated democracies have had a predominant party system (Nwokora and Pelizzo 2014). To consolidate a　PPS, some political theories assume that an incumbent party will attempt to anchor voting behavior by ideological polarization. However, does this strategy actually work? In Turkey, the incumbent Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi: AKP) government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan has campaigned with a focus on conservatives and nationalist voters. My analysis of the 2018 post-election survey reveals that the ideological polarization strategy was successful with conservatives, but not with nationalists (Hazama 2021). While conservatives who supported the incumbent party replicated their support, nationalists were less likely than other groups to repeat their support for the incumbent. Nationalists tended to punish the incumbent party more severely than conservatives for its poor economic performance.

Individuals who believe that their job is interesting work harder, have greater job satisfaction, and are less likely to quit their job. Job interestingness, i.e., how much one finds his/her job interesting, is expected to enhance voluntary learning in the workplace. Despite the importance of job interestingness, empirical studies on its determinants are scarce. This article explores this issue and indicates that the key determinants of job interestingness vary between countries or country groups in terms of their weight. A good relationship with management and colleagues is a very important determinant in Japan, whereas job autonomy is more significant in other high-income countries. A job’s economic meaning has much more influence in middle- and low-income countries. These results imply that the effective ways to make a job interesting are likely to differ across cultures, work organizations, and developmental stages.

The Geographical Simulation Model of the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-GSM) estimates the following economic impact of the US-China trade war: −0.4% (of GDP) for the US, −0.5% for China, and +0.1% for East Asia (excluding China). Moreover, the electronics and electrical machinery sectors in both the US and China will suffer significantly. By contrast, the electronics and electrical machinery sectors in East Asia could benefit from this trade war. Although the US-China trade war benefits East Asian countries, for the time being, they are more vulnerable to US tariff increases than China, and it would be preferable to bring the US back into multilateral trade negotiations in a concerted effort.

Peru is an emerging international exporter of fresh fruits and vegetables (FFVs), with exports expanding rapidly in the past two decades. FFVs are primary products that have little value-added. However, delivering high-quality FFVs to the market at the right moment can add value to these products. Creating value chains to accommodate demand was key to industrial development based on the export of primary products. Counter-season production is necessary but not sufficient for Peruvian FFV exporters to be competitive. Individual efforts of Peruvian agribusiness companies combined with their collective actions to build the country’s solid phytosanitary capacity have made the country one of the world's emerging FFV exporters.

The development of information technology has enabled the digitalization of economic activity worldwide, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic has boosted this trend. Consequently, it becomes increasingly important to establish widely accepted international rules on e-commerce. This article discusses how the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement was reached among diverse member countries and draws implications for the ongoing competition for a global rule on e-commerce.

Increases in the international trade of secondhand goods are attributable to the mainstreaming free trade regime since the early 1990s and advancements in technology, especially the development and diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The international trade of secondhand goods for reuse has the potential to conserve natural resources. However, many developing countries have prohibited the import of secondhand goods because of the possible negative impacts on the environment, such as recycling of nonreusable parts without pollution control, and on industrial development.

Sustainability standard schemes have been used globally to promote sustainable agricultural consumption and production for more than decades. Nongovernment organizations in Europe and the United States have created these globally recognized standards driven by the need for sustainable consumption. Furthermore, both public and private sectors in various countries have subsequently introduced local standards enhancing sustainable production. Consequently, growers, firms, and consumers have choices among multiple standards with different characteristics. Is the proliferation of standards beneficial or harmful to enhance sustainability? Previous studies do not fully address the roles of local standards. This study investigated the case of palm oil sustainability standards through a focus on a global standard and the counterpart local standards. Complementary roles of global and local standards depending on the market and producers are shown.

The governance of fertilizer quality is important to food policy because the prevalence of low-quality fertilizers discourages fertilizer use and stagnates agricultural productivity growth. This column discusses the current condition of fertilizer quality and describes the initiatives taken against the problem in Vietnam. We report that average fertilizer quality is fair, and farmers expressed no concerns over fertilizer quality—contrasting what has been reported for sub-Saharan Africa. Vietnam’s fertilizer market is governed by three initiatives: government regulations and controls through licensing, mandatory quality labeling, and random inspections; producers’ effort to maintain quality and brand through warranty and dealer certifications; and hierarchical social learning through which a farmer’s quality assessments about fertilizer quality are aggregated to retailers who then update product assortments on the basis of reputations. The importance of public regulations is highlighted through a discussion on how government and market initiatives interact and complement each other.

As developing countries join the global value chain, rising incomes make it easier for households to send children to school. However, rapid blue-collar job growth also reduces incentives for students to remain in school after reaching working age. In a new paper using data on children’s participation in the exam governing admission to upper-secondary schooling in Vietnam, we find that a more active labor market reduces propensity to continue schooling after Grade 9. The data come from some of Vietnam’s poorer and more remote provinces and so illuminate the challenges of educational development outside of major cities.

Legal prohibition is considered an indispensable first step for eradicating discriminatory cultural practices against women. However, game-theoretical analysis of the cultural practice of levirate marriage indicates that criminalizing it may in fact reduce quality of life among women. Levirate marriage stipulates widows should marry the male relative of their deceased husband; otherwise, deceased husband’s extended family would expel them. Therefore, when legally prohibiting discriminatory cultural practices, it is important to deliberate upon why those practices exist and whether criminalizing them would indeed improve women’s lives, given the existing legal, social, and cultural contexts. Other complementary policies should also be implemented to mitigate the possible negative consequences of legal prohibition.

As the Biden administration enters its second year, frictions between the US and China show no sign of abating and may even deteriorate further. Prospects for restoration of pre-trade war economic relations between the world’s two largest economies remain dim. Other Asia-Pacific economies are involuntarily affected by the policies of their largest trading partners. This note provides context by summarizing relevant aspects of the US-China conflict, and explores short and long run implications for trading partners with particular focus on spillovers to ASEAN economies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused serious disruptions in education, potentially complicating industrialization, a long-standing challenge for developing countries. This column presents the risk of industrialization stagnation in developing countries due to poor education systems and the consequent low social mobility. Manufacturing automation, which may be accelerated further as a result of the pandemic, can assist developing countries in industrial upgrading. However, poor education systems limit the supply of labor with appropriate skills and make the welfare effect ambiguous, thereby widening the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor. The growing fiscal burden caused by the COVID-19 crisis may leave small policy room, but improving education systems should be prioritized.

This column attempts to summarize the main arguments of Murakami and Otsuka (2020) to elucidate the need to integrate the quantitative approach of foreign direct investment (FDI) studies with insightful but descriptive studies of global value chains. Defects of FDI StudiesI believe that nothing is more problematic than empirical studies of the impact of FDI on the development of local industries in developing countries. Although the issue is of utmost practical importance, there are at least two major defects in most existing studies. As discussed by Murakami and Otsuka (2020), those studies statistically analyze the productivity effects of FDI on local firms i. Researchers commonly assume, without testing, that the presence of foreign firms enhances the productivity of local firms, because of the spillover effect of the advanced knowledge of production from foreign firms. The spillover effect is the external effect, which is assumed to affect the level of productivity without conscious transaction of knowledge. Visual inspections of improved products manufactured by foreign firms, learning by reverse engineering of such products, and stealing ideas by poaching workers from foreign firms are examples of the spillover effects. The following questions arise: (1) Does the common statistical analysis make sense? and (2) Is the spillover effect really important?

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread worldwide since 2020. Although the global economy has suffered from various types of negative shocks, such as financial crises or natural disasters, one of the most distinctive features of the COVID-19 pandemic is the forced adoption of infection prevention measures, such as lockdown and social distancing.

In recent years, the application of data acquired by satellites has proliferated beyond security and earth observation purposes. Satellite-based positioning systems, such as GPS, are an integral part of global IT and many businesses. Although we have been aware of their potential benefits for decades, the application of remote sensing data in the economic literature has advanced slowly. This short article proceeds as follows. First, it digests the expansion of satellite data and its application. Second, it summarizes the recent application of remote sensing data (most of which was accelerated because of the COVID-19 pandemic) by the author and his colleagues. Third, it concludes with recommendations to promote the application of satellite data in economics.

We develop a visualization method based on the smile curve concept to provide reader-friendly presentations of global value chains (GVCs) analyses. Our method combines “trade in value-added” and “value-added propagation length” measures, thus helping in the identification of value-added gains, positions, and interdependencies of all GVC participants along the upstream and downstream of a smile curve. Applying this method to the exporting activities of domestic- and foreign-owned ICT firms in the US and China reveals how “sticky” the interdependency between the US and China is and the potential impacts of the US–China trade conflicts on other GVC participants along smile curves.

Child marriage is internationally defined as marriage below the age of 18. Given the alleged detrimental consequences of this practice, activists, NGOs, donors, and governments have implemented policies and programs with the aim of eliminating child marriage. However, legal measures are known to be ineffective, and the impact of these programs has been mixed. Our recent study explored a reason behind these mixed results. Estimation results showed heterogenous impacts of these programs by combination of social contexts and girls’ characteristics. We utilized two programs with randomized controlled trials conducted in Bangladesh and Zambia by the Population Council. Our study suggests the importance of considering the social context in designing and implementing a successful program to end child marriage.