Charles Harvie

The Asia-Pacific region generates over half of global economic activity (54.2%) and about 43.7% of global trade, and is the most dynamic region in the global economy. At the core of this is an increasingly dynamic, vibrant and entrepreneurial small-medium sized enterprise sector. Advances in information and communications technology, market liberalisation and moves towards closer regional economic integration (e.g. ASEAN, and prospective ASEAN+1, ASEAN+3, ASEAN+5 and ASEAN+6 arrangements) provide new opportunities, as well as new challenges, for regional small business entrepreneurs. In conjunction with these developments has come the increased recognition by regional governments, particularly in the wake of the 1997-98 financial and economic crisis, of the need for expanded entrepreneurial activity in the context of small businesses for the generation of regional income, employment, exports, investment, economic growth, poverty alleviation and regional development. This would also facilitate comprehensive restructuring of corporate sectors, with the aim of improving transparency, improving corporate governance, developing globally competitive enterprises, and further developing the region’s burgeoning and economically significant production networks. This paper reviews the contribution of small-medium sized business entrepreneurs in the Asia-Pacific region, the challenges and opportunities they face in the context of globalisation and regional developments, key capacity building areas, government support measures and potential competitiveness strategies for their survival and development.

The increased demand for energy and other resources in global markets، particularly arising from the rapidly developing economies of China and India، has resulted in considerable turbulence in resource prices، and most obviously that of oil. The recent magnitude of change، both positive and negative، in resource prices and their macroeconomic implications is of considerable contemporary importance for both resource importing and exporting economies. For a resource exporting economy، such as that of Australia، the resource price boom had a number of beneficial effects: increased government taxation revenues، increased employment and higher wages in the resource and resource related sectors، increased spending in the domestic economy and buoyant economic growth، increased resource exports to the booming economies of China and India and a stronger domestic currency with beneficial effects upon inflation. On the other hand these developments are likely to have adverse effects on the non resource sector that is subject to more competition for limited resources، a stronger exchange rate results in a loss of international competitiveness and reduced exports، a loss of employment in the non resource sector which is likely to be more labour intensive، and an eventual slow down in the overall economy. These positive and negative effects، and the overall impact of a resource price boom، will fundamentally require closer analysis of the structure of the economy under scrutiny. In this context the policy response by government is likely to be crucial in producing overall positive effects. The objective of this paper is to provide an analytical framework that can be utilised for a resource exporting economy for this purpose. This paper develops a dynamic macroeconomic model for a resource producing and exporting economy، with the objective of capturing key macroeconomic outcomes arising from an increase in the price of the resource. The adjustment process in the model emphasises a spending (or wealth) effect، an income effect، a revenue effect، a current account effect and an exchange rate effect from resource production that will facilitate a robust analysis of the macroeconomic impact of resource price shocks and policy responses to this.