From: Robin Hanson (hanson@dosh.hum.caltech.edu)
Date: Thu Aug 29 1996 - 11:09:03 MDT
"Why is Asia Booming?" seems an oft-asked question, who various
answers are taken as important clues about future trends and what it
will take to prosper. Here is a paper that suggests a very simple
explanation.
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From: Wayne Marr <M_Wayne_Marr@ssrn.com>
Sender: Economics Research Network <ERN3@publisher.ssrn.com>
Reply-To: ADMIN@ssrn.com
To: Multiple recipients of list ERN3 <ERN3@publisher.ssrn.com>
Message-Id: <9608291440.AA25020@hss.caltech.edu>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 10:03:24 -0500
Subject: DEVELOP-WPS: ERN Development Economics Abstracts, 08/29/96
____________________________________________________________
W O R K I N G Paper Abstracts
"Asian Demography and Foreign Capital Dependence"
BY: MATTHEW HIGGINS
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
JEFFREY G. WILLIAMSON
Harvard University and NBER
Paper ID: NBER Working Paper 5560
Date: May 1996
Contact: Jeffrey G. Williamson
E-Mail: MAILTO:jwilliam@kuznets.harvard.edu
Postal: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: (617) 868-3900
Fax: (617) 495-7730
ERN Ref: DEVELOP:WPS96-105
PAPER REQUESTS: Papers are $5.00 (plus $10.00/order outside
the United States). E-mail: MAILTO:orders@nber.harvard.edu
Postal: 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138. Phone:
(617) 868-3900. Fax: (617) 868-2742. Subscriptions: e-mail
MAILTO:subs@nber.harvard.edu or write to "Subscriptions" at
the address above.
Ansley Coale and Edgar Hoover were right about Asia. Rising
fertility and declining infant mortality have had a profound
impact on Asian savings, investment and foreign capital
dependency since Coale and Hoover wrote in 1958. We argue
that much of the impressive rise in Asian savings rates
since the 1960s can be explained by the equally impressive
decline in youth dependency burdens; where Asia has kicked
the foreign capital dependence habit is where youth
dependency burdens have fallen most dramatically. Aging will
not diminish Japan's capacity to export capital in the next
century, but little of it will go to the rest of Asia since
the rest will become net capital exporters, at least if
demography is allowed to have its way. These conclusions
emerge from a model which rejects steady-state analysis in
favor of transition analysis and extends the conventional
focus of the dependency rate literature on savings to
investment and net capital flows.
JEL Classification: J11, J13
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