Asia Institute - Research Publications
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ItemChanging Methods for the Allocation of Scarce Resources to Competing Ends: A Possible Explanation for the Wages Squeeze and Responses to It(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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ItemDevelopmental Knowledge Production in Cambodia: A Case Study of Development Research and Attempted Discursive Domination(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.