The Myanmar Development Resource Institute (Burmese: မြန်မာ့ဖွံ့ဖြိုး တိုးတက်ရေး အရင်းအမြစ် အဖွဲ့အစည်း, abbreviated MDRI) is an independent think tank and economic and social policy research organization based in Yangon, Myanmar. MDRI consists of 3 specialized centers, namely the Centre for Economic and Social Development (CESD), Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Centre for Legal Affairs. MRDI was initially proposed by Burmese economist U Myint in May 2011, in a paper entitled “Reducing Poverty in Myanmar: The Way Forward,” to combat poverty. The Institute was then founded the following year, by U Myint and other advisors to President Thein Sein..
Recent decades have witnessed an increasing integration of developing countries into global value chains (GVCs). This growing participation in global production sharing has raised hopes for economic upgrading within such value chains. However, globalization has intensified international competition, and achieving economic upgrading is not an easy task. Moreover, the social consequences of participating in GVCs are not always positive; however, they have received considerably less attention in the literature. This paper suggests a simple and parsimonious approach to measuring economic and social upgrading (and downgrading) in GVCs. Applying this parsimonious methodology and using quantitative secondary data, we analyze how widespread upgrading has been in four selected manufacturing GVCs: apparel, wood furniture, automotive, and mobile phones. We also investigate to what extent downgrading is part of the reality and undertake a comparative analysis across GVCs, regions and country groups (developing vs. developed countries). We find that the promise of industrial upgrading through participation in GVCs does not materialize for everyone. Indeed, economic upgrading has taken place in just over a quarter of the countries in our sample, among them mainly developing countries. Finally, we examine the relationship between economic performance and social performance in the different GVCs to investigate whether or not economic upgrading is typically associated with social upgrading. While patterns differ across GVCs, we find that economic upgrading is more likely to occur simultaneously with social upgrading than without, and vice versa. Our analysis, thus, suggests that economic upgrading is conducive to, but not sufficient for, social upgrading to occur.
La experiencia de la crisis económica mundial indujo a los países en desarrollo a intensificar la diversificación de las fuentes de crecimiento buscando modelos alternativos de desenvolvimiento económico. La expansión del comercio Sur-Sur se fue afianzando en esta búsqueda. Pero ¿cuán prometedora es esta estrategia? Procurando dar respuesta, aquí se documenta la evolución del comercio Sur-Sur, ofreciendo algunas consideraciones teóricas. Luego se realiza un análisis econométrico para estimar las elasticidades-ingreso de la demanda de importaciones en las relaciones comerciales bilaterales entre países en desarrollo de Asia y América del Sur y dos mercados clave del Norte. Al aplicar un modelo ARDL, el análisis produce variados resultados sobre si el comercio Sur-Sur presenta mayores elasticidades-ingreso que el Sur-Norte, revelándose que el primero puede ser una fuente alternativa de crecimiento, especialmente si persisten las diferencias en el aumento de las importaciones y el ingreso entre el Norte y el Sur.
Myanmar has long been rigidly centralized. In 2011, however, 14 regional and state assemblies were established. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, this article evaluates the performance of 10 assemblies toward the end of their initial five-year mandate. It finds little evidence of a territorial dispersal of power.
