Trends in globalization of select Asian countries

Abstract

Abstract. In this study we have constructed a composite index of globalization of select Asian countries during 1970-2014 by minimizing the Euclidean norm of Shapley values of indicator variables contributing to the overall index. As a consequence, the mean expected marginal contributions of constituent variables to the overall index are approximately equal and thus, the overall composite index represents the constituent variables optimally. We call this index the Almost Equal Marginal Contribution (AEMC) index. We find that AEMC index and the KOF index of globalization are highly correlated (Pearson’s r=0.982).  We find that Singapore, Cyprus, Israel, Qatar, Malaysia, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain and Japan have done very well and scored above 0.7. At the other end, Yemen, Tajikistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, Nepal and Myanmar have scored below 0.5. Trends in globalization are increasing in general, but the rate of globalization, which accelerated after 1991, lost its momentum after 2007. Disparities in globalization, as measured by Gini coefficient over the countries under study, were more or less constant up to 1985 but after that they started declining. We have found that the index of globalization goes well with other socio-economic measures such as Economic Freedom Index, International Innovation Index, Social Progress Index, Human Development Index and Corruption Perception Index, showing high values of Kendall’s Tau and Spearman’s Rho. Its association with Democracy Index is rather weak but positive. It is almost uncorrelated with the Gender Gap Index. We observe, therefore, that globalization index is moving well with the indices of socio-economic condition in the Asian countries. 

Keywords. Globalization, Synthetic index, Asian countries, Shapley values, Equi-marginal contribution.

JEL. C43, C71, F02, F60, O53.