China has become the biggest exporter of electronic products in the world. Government policy intervention has contributed significantly to the rapid expansion of the electronics industry. The present paper examines the evolutionary development of industrial policies related to the electronics industry in China and the impacts of such policies on the shaping of the industry. In particular, the relationship between foreign funded enterprises and domestic firms are examined in detail. The future trend of the industry is also discussed in the paper, and the policy focus of the Chinese Government is predicted. Copyright 2007 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Purpose This study aims to examine how aid for trade policy and regulations (AfTPR) contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 8.1 (sustain per capita economic growth) and whether the effectiveness of AfTPR is conditional to the stable political environment. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a widely accepted endogenous growth framework and applies panel data fixed effects and two-step difference and system generalized method of moments estimation strategies on panel data of 50 developing countries over 2005–2017. Findings The findings of the study confirm that aid to trade policy promotes sustainable economic growth in developing countries, but this category of development assistance is only effective and significant for low and lower middle-income (LLMI) economies. The positive and significant effect of AfTPR in upper middle-income countries is conditional to their level of political stability. Under a stable political situation, the positive effect of AfTPR on sustainable growth remains almost same for the LLMI countries, whereas for the upper middle-income countries this growth effect reached almost double. Research limitations/implications International trade is considered as a driver for inclusive and sustainable economic growth, whereas aid for trade is acknowledged for its prospective contribution toward achieving these goals. The findings have dominant policy implications for the international development organizations and donors, which recommend that it is more desirable to transmit aid toward developing and implementing trade policy and regulations as per capita economic growth improves in the aid recipient countries. Originality/value According to the authors’ knowledge, no prior study empirically analyzes the effect of AfTPRs on SDG target 8.1.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate whether aggregate and sectoral disbursement of aid for trade (AfT) facilitates achieving gender equality and women empowerment in aid-recipient developing countries for the period 2005–2019.Design/methodology/approachThe study develops static and dynamic panel data and empirical specifications and employs fixed effects and generalised method of moments (GMM) estimation techniques to estimate the impact of aggregate AfT and different categories of AfT on women empowerment. The study uses the Gender Inequality Index (GII) and Global Gender Gap Index (GGI) as the proxy measures of SDG-5, where the higher (lower) value of GII (GGI) implies higher gender disparities and lower women empowerment, and vice versa.FindingsThe study finds that aggregate AfT and aid disbursement for the development of economic infrastructure, productive capability building and trade policy and regulations contribute significantly to achieve women empowerment by reducing gender inequalities concerning the labour force and political participation, education enrolment and better healthcare and by increasing gender gap index in relation to economic participation, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment. The impact of aggregate AfT and its different categories is found significant only in low- and lower-middle-income developing countries. The findings also indicate that the impact of AfT is not noticeably different across different regions of the world as well as the religious belief of the developing countries.Practical implicationsThe study recommends that more allocation of gender-responsive AfT, whether aggregated or disaggregated, significantly helps women empowerment and assists developing economies to achieve SDG-5.Originality/valueThis study is one of the few that investigate the impact of aggregate AfT on gender inequality and women empowerment. This is the foremost study that examines the effects of each individual category of AfT on women empowerment vis-à-vis SDG-5.

No abstract

Women empowerment is inevitable and a fundamental goal for inclusive growth and sustainable development. The study aims to analyze the effect of financial inclusion on women empowerment using both fixed-effects and panel generalized methods of moments (GMM) estimation techniques covering a panel dataset of 50 emerging economies from 2005 to 2017. We use accessibility to automated teller machine services, availability of bank branches and accessibility to bank assets as three different measures of financial inclusion and gender inequality index, gender development index and political participation of females as the measure of women empowerment. We find evidence that each measure of financial inclusion is associated with lower gender inequality, higher gender development and more opportunities for political involvement of women respectively. Using different econometric estimation method and a board range of inclusion measures confirms the more robust association between financial inclusion and women empowerment. The study, thus, concludes that financial inclusion plays an important role in the welfare of female and girls which would further assist emerging economies to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 5.