SEMINAR: The Rise of China and India and the Commodity

Topic: The Rise of China and India and the Commodity
Boom: Economic and Environmental Implications
for Low-income Countries

Speaker: Professor Sisira Jayasuriya
Department of Economics and Finance
La Trobe University
Melbourne, Australia

Date: Friday, 4 July 2008

Time: 10.30 am – 12.00 noon

Venue: Seminar Room II, ISEAS


Speaker

Sisira Jayasuriya is Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics and Finance at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.

He was Director, Asian Economics Centre, at the University of Melbourne from 2001 till early 2008 and held previous appointments at the Australian National University and the International Rice Research Institute (Philippines). He has been a consultant to many international organisations such as the ADB, World Bank, ILO, UNESCAP, International Food Policy Research Institute, and also to several government agencies and private corporations.

He gained his undergraduate education in Sri Lanka, and obtained his Masters and PhD in Economics at the Australian National University.

Professor Jayasuriya’s current research interests are focused on issues related to economic development in Asia in the context of globalisation. He is author or co-author of several books including The Open Economy and the Environment: Development, Trade and Resources in Asia [with Ian Coxhead, Edward Elgar]; Courting Turmoil and Averting Prosperity: Colombia since the 1960s (World Bank); Macroeconomic Policies, Crises and Long Run Growth: Sri Lanka (World Bank),The World Rubber Industry (Routledge), and has published extensively in international journals such as the Journal of Development Economics, World Development, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Oxford Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Development Studies. His current research covers the impact of China and India on other developing countries, regional trading agreements, WTO issues, agricultural reforms in India, and the economics of natural disasters.

Abstract

The rapid growth of China and, more recently, of India, is having major effects on every facet of the global economy. In this paper we examine the economic and environmental implications of their growth for resource rich low income and middle income countries, focusing on the competitive pressures exerted by the surging supply of labour intensive manufacturing exports on the one hand and the demand-induced commodity price boom. We sketch a trade-theoretic model that highlights key economic forces operating on resource-rich economies, showing how the growth of these ‘giants’ generates adjustment pressures on either side of the factor-intensity spectrum of countries’ own factor endowment range. We discuss how differences in relative factor endowments of resource rich countries can produce quite different outcomes in the context of new patterns of trade and production associated with product fragmentation that facilitate adjustments through complementary industrialization patterns. We also explore the effects on production, trade, environment and prospects for future growth, recognizing that commodity extraction and production can have strong environmental impacts, particularly in the context of weak institutions and other market failures. We illustrate these different impacts by considering the cases of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand and highlight the developmental implications and policy issues.


You are cordially invited to the Seminar.

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