Asia Institute - Research Publications

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Author: Fforde, Adam ×

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    Measuring economic transformation: what to make of constant price sectoral GDP: evidence from Vietnam
    Fforde, A (World Economics Association, 2021)
    The paper discusses the analysis of economic growth and transformation and the concept of constant price sectoral GDP, usually understood to measure real factor rewards, linked to actual factor inputs. It reviews criticisms of such statistics and statistical conventions underlying GDP data, their focus upon current price factor incomes and implications of the practice of constructing constant price sectoral GDP from revalued net output (gross output less non-factor inputs). Innovatively, it shows how recalculations at constant prices of actual sectoral factor inputs at a year away from the base-year will not necessarily equal revalued gross output less non-factor inputs, the usual basis for such data. The accounting identity that requires their equality only holds for current prices. Therefore, constant price sectoral GDP data does not measure actual factor inputs. Despite this, the analytical frameworks of economists analysing structural transformation often assumes that they have, in constant price sectoral GDP, a measure of actual factor inputs (when they do not). This inhibits analyses from engaging properly with incentives, often disregarding the possibility of disequilibria by adopting a production function approach that, encouraged by the belief that constant price sectoral data measures changes in actual factor inputs, expects technical conditions to determine incentives (factor rewards). The paper shows this risk of confirmation bias by examining work on Vietnam.1
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    A Public Affair? Vietnam's State Enterprise Sector: The 'State Business Interest' and Policy History
    Fforde, A (Taylor & Francis, 2021)
    The article presents a history of the policy of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) towards state owned enterprises (SOEs). Despite an evident embrace of markets from the early 1990s, the VCP has resisted formal political change. The state sector has retained a privileged economic and political position. Policy has been made in the context of a political order where the interests of certain groups within the ostensibly hierarchical state have usually prevailed over attempts to generate coherent economic strategy. This has resulted in a situation where the formal ownership of SOEs is unclear, and real ownership is vested, apparently, in groups within a State Business Interest.
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    The emerging core characteristics of Vietnam's political economy
    Fforde, A (WILEY, 2017-11)
    This paper offers an understanding of the core drivers of the political economy of the ruling Communist Party in Vietnam. In the absence of political reform, the regime does not possess the powers required by the new conditions of a market economy and an increasingly open society. Designed for Soviet totalitarianism, and without popular support or authority, the formal political institutions are anachronistic and thus limit the range of powers available to the Party. As the regime is thus unable to reliably deploy policy unless it feels threatened, politics becomes a competition over spoils. Thus, if macroeconomic instability actually or potentially threatens the regime, the Politburo gains authority to act, and policy is deployed. Yet, as popular discontent mounts over corruption, favourable treatment of politically connected businesses, public education and health, and other areas not seen as regime‐threatening, the disequilibrium leads to use of the security forces and increasing violence against popular opposition.
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    Changing Methods for the Allocation of Scarce Resources to Competing Ends: A Possible Explanation for the Wages Squeeze and Responses to It
    Fforde, A (WILEY, 2018-09)
    The paper discusses the economic analysis of modern rich economies. It argues that standard economic theory acknowledges that it does not apply if there is own‐consumption and/or joint production and suggests that successful economic reforms of the 1980s have used markets to drive down costs in sectors where standard economic theory applies. This process has resulted in a situation where rich country economies are increasingly oriented to sectors – predominantly services – where markets work less well, namely those with extensive own‐consumption and joint production, where theory says that factor rewards and other prices cannot be determined by production and consumption conditions. Arguing that this can explain the “wages squeeze,” the paper concludes that other economic mechanisms should and have arisen to secure better welfare gains, thus explaining the recent shift in policy priorities of the ACTU.
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    Developmental Knowledge Production in Cambodia: A Case Study of Development Research and Attempted Discursive Domination
    Fforde, A (WILEY, 2018-01)
    The effects of foreign trade on the environment in the cases of rice, cassava, and fish in Cambodia are examined in this article, but as a case study analyzing markers of developmental discursive practice. The study identifies and analyzes five rhetorical techniques in discursive practice—assertion, provincialism, dismissal of positive outcomes, reference to external causes, and policy fetishism—then argues that these have in common the denial of local voice. It argues that their deployment tends to increase where a discursive order is more contested. In general, the case study shows how much of development policy literature is rather disreputable.
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