This general issue brings to you six very solid empirical studies that cover a wide range of policy issues including social inequality, environmental government, financial policy, disaster management and fiscal policy. Written by Dongshu Ou, the first article provides useful analytical insights into earnings inequality of immigrants in Hong Kong and the differences across genders. This is a timely contribution, given the rising social attention in Hong Kong with regard to the socioeconomic well-being of immigrants. The use of longitudinal census data enables the author to examine if structural changes in the Hong Kong economy have left any impact on income gap. It first finds that the increase in overall inequality is not primarily explained by immigration per se, but by the within-group variance of natives, and in fact, the reduced share of Chinese immigrant employees has actually contributed to the lowered inequality among men; although the analysis on women’s earnings inequality first appears a function of between-group variance, the author has revealed that this is due to the existence of large population of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong. The pattern of wage inequality disappears once this factor is removed. Ou’s study offers a series of evidence-based insights into the changing trends of income inequality in Hong Kong by accounting for the factor of immigration.
The second article by David Barua Yap II and Monica M. Melchor presents and analyses the tricky phenomenon in the Philippines that the systematic educational outperformance of females fails to translate into gender parity in wages. Despite its relatively low level of economic development, the Philippines is undoubtedly an outperformer in gender equality all over the world, with women enjoying higher level of sociopolitical status, especially when compared with counterparts in other Asian countries. This is, unfortunately, not reflected in their wages. Using survey data, the authors confirm that Filipino women earn systematically less than men at all levels of educational attainment, and this disparity is most significant at the lower socioeconomic strata. The Philippine story defies conventional wisdom that education leads to greater labour market benefits because of enhanced human capital. As the authors point out, the cultural and social stereotypes, coupled with less employment opportunities due to economic stagnation of the country, have not only created an employment market unfair to females, but also left those of lower socioeconomic status to greater vulnerability of marginalization.
In the third paper about environmental governance, Nga-Yee Irene Cheng and Wing-Mui Winnie So examine to what extent have good governance principles as well as frameworks been adopted in the context of Hong Kong. Their historical review suggests major progress in public awareness of environmental issues as well as governmental responses to environmental deterioration. Non-government organizations, education institutions and the business sector have also been involved in environmental governance. While collaborative governance entails community engagement and citizen participation, the authors, however, identify a number of gaps and barriers towards good environmental governance in Hong Kong. In particular, the structural tension between business and other stakeholders remains largely unresolved, compounded by the trust deficit among them. The problems identified are certainly not unique to Hong Kong; the paradigmatic shift from state-centred governance to one involved by multiple stakeholders in a concerted fashion has been barely visible in many Asian economies.
Contributed by J. J. Woo and M. Howlett, the fourth article sheds fresh light on policy dynamics and policy change with the case of financial policy-making in Asia. A battery of theoretical frameworks has been established in the literature of policy sciences aimed to explain the dynamics of policy change vs. policy stability. A popular way of theorization is to conceive actors involved policy-making as interacting in an insider–outsider manner, and this policy subsystem plays the central role in policy changes. Having recognized the limitations of existing models, the authors synthesize the theoretical frameworks and posit the existence of a ‘critical subsector’ that is powerful enough to influence sectoral policy dynamics. They choose financial policy-making, a policy area characterized by governmental regulatory, enormous business interests and frequent interaction between the two, for analysis. Their case studies of Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai have revealed interesting convergence as well as divergence in policy dynamics, to be understood by both the role of the critical policy subsector and the institutional configuration in which it operates. For readers of both policy sciences and financial policy, this article is highly recommended.
While people’s memories of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake are gradually fading out, scholarly investigations on impact analysis and post-crisis management are still underway. Novia Budi Parwantoa and Tatsuo Oyama provide a very rigorous study in the fifth article of this issue. Panel data of disaster-hit prefectures both before and after the earthquake are analysed. Results demonstrate significant devastation in both the agricultural sector and the manufacturing industries, with the former suffering from greater losses. The study also suggests good performance of the Japanese government in post-disaster restoration and reconstruction.
The last article comes from China. Jun Ma, Zaozhao Zhao and Meili Niu investigate a policy issue of wide concern, the fiscal risk of government debts. It is well known that China’s economic miracle in the past three decades has been essentially a model of state-led growth, in which not only the central government plays a key steering role, but also local governments, too, are enthusiastically motivated to pursue economic growth. Coupled by increased expenditure responsibilities and the need for maintaining GDP growth rate, local governments in China have been greatly relying on borrowing. The recent years have heard increasing concerns over fiscal risks. The authors use two analytical approaches to scrutinize government debt in China and argue for the unlikely event that a debt crisis will occur in the near future, given the comparatively healthy and sound public finance system. However, the authors also warn policy-makers the foreseeable daunting challenges in ensuring fiscal balance in the coming decades. A major restructuring of the country’s budgeting system is thus needed.
Ka Ho Mok
Editor-in-chiefLingnan University, Hong Kong
Alex Jingwei He
Associate editor October 2015