"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

'This book provides a coherent and current account of how India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and the People's Republic of China coped with the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s and the recent global economic recession, and how they may address future challenges in maintaining growth in difficult times. It features a valuable overview of issues from a regional perspective, five chapters on general elements and obstacles in development, and individual chapters on the experience of each of the six countries. Every chapter is replete with relevant institutional and statistical data. The volume fills a void in the literature and is highly recommended for graduate students and for economists concerned with contemporary Asia.' – Peter Drake, The University of New England and Australian Catholic University, Australia 'To understand what makes Asia tick in the face of continuing global uncertainty and instability one has to go beyond numbers into the region's psyche and idiosyncrasies. This volume provides an interestingly intrusive and refreshingly insightful analysis of a highly complex phenomenon that defies generalizations as shown by the diversity of individual country experiences.' – Mohamed Ariff, International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance (INCEIF), Malaysia The center of global economic activity is shifting rapidly towards Asia, driven by a combination of the economic dynamism of the People's Republic of China, India, and other middle-income Asian countries, and sluggish growth in the OECD economies. The rapid growth and rising global prominence have raised a range of major challenges for Asia and for the rest of the world. This comprehensive, forward-looking book examines these issues through in-depth studies of major Asian economies and an analysis of the key development policy options. The contributors, leading international authorities in their field, explore cross-cutting thematic issues with special reference to developing Asia. They address a broad range of subjects including: investment and productivity, savings and the savings–investment relationship, financial development, the provision of infrastructure, and governance and institutions. Detailed country studies focusing on the People's Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand not only provide an analytical narrative for each case study, but also draw attention to the similarities and diversity within the region. This challenging and thought-provoking book will prove an important point of reference for scholars, researchers, and students in the fields of economics, development economics, and Asian studies.

Multinationals and East Asian Integration

Crafting stimulus packages and financial bailouts to address immediate problems has for many reasons been a priority for policymakers. In this Council Special Report, however, Steven Dunaway argues that policymakers must go beyond these steps and tackle one of the root causes of today's crisis: imbalances between savings and investment in major countries. The report analyzes the nature of these imbalances, which occur when some countries, such as the United States, run large current account (essentially trade) deficits while others, such as China, maintain large surpluses. Dunaway identifies three features of the international financial system that have allowed the imbalances to persist, features that involve both floating and managed exchange rates as well as the issuance of reserve assets. In particular, he notes that the United States' status as an issuer of such assets has enabled it to finance a current account deficit. The report then prescribes a variety of steps to address global imbalances. Beyond stimulus packages around the world, it urges measures to raise savings (principally government savings) in the United States, reform labor and product markets in Europe and Japan to increase competition and flexibility, and boost domestic consumption in China. Finally, the report advocates improving International Monetary Fund (IMF) surveillance of member states' economic policies by reducing the role of the Fund's executive board and depoliticizing the selection of its senior management.

An accessible overview of political, economic, and strategic dimensions of global supply chains in a changing global political economy.

Kevin Watkins analyses the manner in which the economies of East Asia have attained high economic growth rates and managed to share the prosperity widely. A caveat is included as some groups have been excluded from these benefits on ethnic grounds.

In Strategic Coupling, Henry Wai-chung Yeung examines economic development and state-firm relations in East Asia, focusing in particular on South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. As a result of the massive changes of the last twenty-five years, new explanations must be found for the economic success and industrial transformation in the region. State-assisted startups and incubator firms in East Asia have become major players in the manufacture of products with a global reach: Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision has assembled more than 500 million iPhones, for instance, and South Korea’s Samsung provides the iPhone’s semiconductor chips and retina displays.Drawing on extensive interviews with top executives and senior government officials, Yeung argues that since the late 1980s, many East Asian firms have outgrown their home states, and are no longer dependent on state support; as a result the developmental state has lost much of its capacity to steer and direct industrialization. We cannot read the performance of national firms as a direct outcome of state action. Yeung calls for a thorough renovation of the still-dominant view that states are the primary engine of industrial transformation. He stresses action by national firms and traces various global production networks to incorporate both firm-specific activities and the international political economy. He identifies two sets of dynamics in these national-global articulations known as strategic coupling: coevolution in the confluence of state, firm, and global production networks, and the various strategies pursued by East Asian firms to attain competitive positions in the global marketplace.

“The crisis has deeply impacted virtually every economy in the world, and although growth has returned, much progress in the fight against poverty has been lost. More difficult international conditions in the years to come will mean that developing countries will have to place even more emphasis on improving domestic economic conditions to achieve the kind of growth that can durably eradicate poverty.� —Justin Yifu Lin, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President The World Bank 'Global Economic Prospects 2010: Crisis, Finance, and Growth' explores both the short- and medium-term impacts of the financial crisis on developing countries. Although global growth has resumed, the recovery is fragile, and unless business and consumer demand strengthen, the world economy could slow down again. Even if, as appears likely, a double-dip recession is avoided, the recovery is expected to be slow. High unemployment and widespread restructuring will continue to characterize the global economy for the next several years. Already, the crisis has provoked large-scale human suffering. Some 64 million more people around the world are expected to be living on less than a $1.25 per day by the end of 2010, and between 30,000 and 50,000 more infants may have died of malnutrition in 2009 in Sub-Saharan Africa, than would have been the case if the crisis had not occurred. Over the medium term, economic growth is expected to recover. But increased risk aversion, a necessary and desirable tightening of financial regulations in high-income countries, and measures to reduce the exposure of developing economies to external shocks are likely to make finance scarcer and more costly than it was during the boom period. As a result, just as the ample liquidity of the early 2000s prompted an investment boom and an acceleration in developing-country potential output, higher costs will likely yield a slowing in developing-country potential growth rates of between 0.2 and 0.7 percentage points, and as much as an 8 percent decline in potential output over the medium term. In the longer term, however, developing countries can more than offset the implications of more expensive international finance by reducing the cost of capital channeled through their domestic financial markets. For more information, please visit www.worldbank.org/gep2010. To access Prospects for the Global Economy, an online companion publication, please visit www.worldbank.org/globaloutlook.

China’s trade patterns are evolving. While it started in light manufacturing and the assembly of more sophisticated products as part of global supply chains, China is now moving up the value chain, “onshoring” the production of higher-value-added upstream products and moving into more sophisticated downstream products as well. At the same time, with its wages rising, it has started to exit some lower-end, more labor-intensive sectors. These changes are taking place in the broader context of China’s rebalancing—away from exports and toward domestic demand, and within the latter, away from investment and toward consumption—and as a consequence, demand for some commodity imports is slowing, while consumption imports are slowly rising. The evolution of Chinese trade, investment, and consumption patterns offers opportunities and challenges to low-wage, low-income countries, including China’s neighbors in the Mekong region. Cambodia, Lao P.D.R., Myanmar, and Vietnam (the CLMV) are all open economies that are highly integrated with China. Rebalancing in China may mean less of a role for commodity exports from the region, but at the same time, the CLMV’s low labor costs suggest that manufacturing assembly for export could take off as China becomes less competitive, and as China itself demands more consumption items. Labor costs, however, are only part of the story. The CLMV will need to strengthen their infrastructure, education, governance, and trade regimes, and also run sound macro policies in order to capitalize fully on the opportunities presented by China’s transformation. With such policy efforts, the CLMV could see their trade and integration with global supply chains grow dramatically in the coming years.