East Asia Program

The East Asia Program of the Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development (EAP-CGSD) at the Earth Institute at Columbia University is directed by Wing Thye Woo.  Its primary goals are to conduct research that will help economic policymaking in East Asia, and to train students to understand the economies there.

 

EAP-CGSD co-sponsors the Asian Economic Panel (AEP) with the Global Security Research Center at Keio University and the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. AEP promotes high-quality analyses of key economic issues specific to a particular Asian economy, or general to the region.  It consists of 50 leading economists from around the world, and meets twice a year in different countries to discuss 8 to 10 analytical papers specially commissioned for each meeting.   AEP seeks to offer creative solutions to the identified issues by drawing upon the collective expertise of this pool of knowledgeable economists.  Selected papers from the AEP meetings are revised and published in the new journal, Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press.

 

Economic Growth in China Project

This is the largest project being undertaken by EAP-CGSD.  It is a comprehensive study that analyses China's growth along many dimensions, which include:

•  macroeconomic-level growth accounting

•  regional development and urbanization

•  economic stability and structural transformation

•  impact on the international economy, especially on China's neighbors

•  investment in human capital formation, and poverty reduction

•  microeconomic-level estimation of productivity growth

•  comparisons with other transition economies, and with other emerging economies

 

This project involves active collaboration with scholars from other research institutions, amongst which are:

•  Australian National University

•  Monash University (Melbourne)

•  University of Hong Kong

•  University of Michigan

•  University of Toledo

•  Beijing University

•  National Economic Research Institute (Beijing)

•  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)

•  Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Développement International (CERDI)

•  University of Bologna

•  Korea Institute for International Economic Policy

•  Chinese Economists' Society

•  Sichuan University

•  Southwest University of Finance and Economics (Chengdu)

•  Cambridge University

•  University of California, Davis

 

An EAP team is now in the final stages of preparing a report on measures to accelerate the rate of sustainable growth in the western provinces.   This report is based on intensive analysis of several new regional datasets, and on fieldwork conducted in the 2001-2003 period in Sichuan, Gansu, Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, Yunnan, and Guangxi.

 

EAP is helping to establish an interdisciplinary Research Consortium of Western Development, whose present membership consists of the leading universities and research institutes located in the western provinces.  This Research Consortium held its inaugural meeting in Chengdu, China on December 11, 2003.  Professor Jeffrey Sachs is the President of the Research Consortium, and the Secretariat, under the direction of Professor Zhao Changwen, is housed in the Western Development Research Institute of Sichuan University.

Another EAP team is engaged in quantifying the global impact of China's emergence as a major economic power.  At the invitation of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (of the One Hundred Eighth Congress), a mid-term project report was submitted as the statement by Wing Thye Woo to the Hearing of the Commission on December 4, 2003.  EAP is promoting international research on the worldwide repercussions of China's emergence by assisting the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy to organize an international conference on “Rising China and the East Asian Economy” in Seoul, South Korea, 19-20 March 2004.

 

One distinguishing trait of EAP's China research is its heavy emphasis on comparative analysis: comparing China with other transition economies and with other emerging economies.  EAP is now participating in two China-Russia comparison studies:

•  with the Chinese Economists' Society, which organized a field trip to Russia in July 2003

•  with the University of Bologna, Corso di Studi in Civitas dell'Europa Orientale e al Mediterraneo, which hosted the conference "Restructuring and Decentralisation in the Transition. A country comparison: Russia and China" on November 14th and 15th, 2003 in Ravenna, Italy.   Over 60 scholars from China, the European Union, Eastern Europe, and Russia attended this conference.

EAP is now working with the South Asia Program at CGSD to design a comparative China-India research project.  The first study will be on the determinants of inward foreign direct investments in China and India.

 

 

Major Research Projects Under Development

•  A comprehensive analysis of the capacity of East Asian economies to absorb and generate new technologies.

•  A study to design regional institutions that will facilitate economic cooperation and foster economic integration.

 

For more information regarding the Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development's East Asia Program, please contact Wing Thye Woo.