毕业论文急求经济类外文文章

Half-way from rags to richesApr 24th 2008From The Economist print editionVietnam has made a remarkable recovery from war and penury, says Peter Collins (interviewed here). But can it change enough to join the rich world?EyevineCorrection to this articleKNEES and knuckles scraping the ground, the visitors struggle to keep up with the tour guide who is briskly leading the way through the labyrinth of claustrophobic burrows dug into the hard earth. The legendary Cu Chi tunnels, from which the Viet Cong launched waves of surprise attacks on the Americans during the Vietnam war, are now a popular tourist attraction (pictured above). Visitors from all over the world arrive daily at the site near the city that used to be called Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the Communists took the south in 1975.Alongside the wreckage of an abandoned M41 tank another friendly guide demonstrates a dozen types of improvised booby-traps with sharp spikes that were set in and around the tunnels to maim pursuing American soldiers. The Vietnamese not only welcome the tourist dollars Cu Chi brings in, but are also rather proud of it. They feel it demonstrates their ingenuity, adaptability, perseverance and, above all, their determination to resist much stronger foreign invaders, as the country has done many times down the centuries. These days Vietnam also has plenty of other things to be proud of. In the 1980s Ho Chi Minh's successors as party leaders damaged the war-ravaged economy even more by attempting to introduce real communism, collectivising land ownership and repressing private business. This caused the country to slide to the brink of famine. The collapse soon afterwards of its cold-war sponsor, the Soviet Union, added to the country's deep isolation and cut off the flow of roubles that had kept its economy going. Neighbouring countries were inundated with desperate Vietnamese “boat people”. Since then the country has been transformed by almost two decades of rapid but equitable growth, in which Vietnam has flung open its doors to the outside world and liberalised its economy. Over the past decade annual growth has averaged 7.5%. Young, prosperous and confident Vietnamese throng downtown Ho Chi Minh City's smart Dong Khoi street with its designer shops. The quality of life is high for a country that until recently was so poor, and its larger cities have retained some of their colonial charm, though choking traffic and constant construction work are beginning to take their toll. An agricultural miracle has turned a country of 85m once barely able to feed itself into one of the world's main providers of farm produce. Vietnam has also become a big exporter of clothes, shoes and furniture, soon to be joined by microchips when Intel opens its $1 billion factory outside Ho Chi Minh City. Imports of machinery are soaring. Exports plus imports equal 160% of GDP, making the economy one of the world's most open. All this has kept government revenues buoyant despite cuts in import tariffs. The recent introduction of company taxes is also helping to fill the government's coffers. Spending on public services has surged, yet public debt, at an acceptable 43% of GDP, has remained fairly stable. Having made peace with its former foes, Vietnam hosted Presidents Bush, Putin and Hu at the Asia-Pacific summit in 2006 and joined the World Trade Organisation in 2007. This year it has one of the rotating seats on the UN Security Council. Vietnam's Communists conceded economic defeat 22 years ago, in the depths of a crisis, and brought in market-based reforms called doi moi (renewal), similar to those Deng Xiaoping had introduced in China a few years earlier. As in China, it took time for the effects to show up, but over the past few years economic liberalisation has been fostering rapid, poverty-reducing growth.The World Bank's representative in Vietnam, Ajay Chhibber, calls Vietnam a “poster child” of the benefits of market-oriented reforms. Not only does it comply with the catechism of the “Washington Consensus”—free enterprise, free trade, sensible state finances and so on—but it also ticks all the boxes for the Millennium Development Goals, the UN's anti-poverty blueprint. The proportion of households with electricity has doubled since the early 1990s, to 94%. Almost all children now attend primary school and benefit from at least basic literacy.Vietnam no longer really needs the multilateral organisations' aid. Multilateral and bilateral donors together have promised the country $5.4 billion in loans and grants this year, but with so much foreign investment pouring in, Vietnam's currency reserves increased by almost double that figure last year. At least the aid donors have learned from the mid-1990s, when excessive praise discouraged Vietnam from continuing to reform, prompting an exodus of investors. Now the tone in private meetings with officials is much franker, says a diplomat who attends them. Vietnam has become the darling of foreign investors and multinationals. Firms that draw up a “China-plus-one” strategy for new factories in case things go awry in China itself often make Vietnam the plus-one. Wage costs remain well below those in southern China and productivity is growing faster, albeit from a lower base. When the UN Conference on Trade and Development asked multinationals where they planned to invest this year and next, Vietnam, at number six, was the only South-East Asian country in the top ten. The government's programme of selling stakes in publicly owned firms and exposing them to market discipline has recently gathered pace. At the same time the switch from a command economy to free competition has allowed the Vietnamese people's entrepreneurialism to flourish. Almost every household now seems to be running a micro-business on the side, and a slew of ambitious larger firms is coming to the stockmarket. Much of the praise now being showered anew on the country is deserved. The government is well on course for its target of turning Vietnam into a middle-income country by 2010. Its longer-term aim, of becoming a modern industrial nation by 2020, does not seem unrealistic. But from now on the going may get tougher. As Mr Chhibber notes, few countries escape the “middle-income trap” as they become richer. They tend to lose their reformist zeal and see their growth fizzle. A study in 2006 by the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences concluded that further reductions in poverty will require higher growth rates than in the past because the remaining poor are well below the poverty line, whereas many of those who recently crossed it did not have far to go.The stench of corruptionThe Communist Party leadership openly admits that the Vietnamese public is fed up with the endemic corruption at all levels of public life, from lowly traffic policemen and clerks to the most senior people in ministries. In 2006, just before the party's five-yearly congress, the transport minister resigned and several officials were arrested over a scandal in which millions of dollars of foreign aid were gambled on the outcome of football matches. The leadership insists it is doing its best to clean up, but a lot remains to be done.Almost as bad as the corruption is the glacial speed of legislative and bureaucratic processes. Proposed laws have to pass through all sorts of hoops before taking effect, with endless rounds of consultations to build consensus. The dividing line between the Communist Party, the government and the courts is not always clear. The justice system is rudimentary. Lawyers have no formal access to past case files, so they find it hard to use precedent in legal argument.The government is part-way through a huge project to slim the bureaucracy and streamline official procedures. It recently cut the number of ministries from 28 to 22. Yet for the moment the bureaucratic logjam is stopping the country building the roads, power stations and other public works it needs to maintain its growth rate. Nguyen Tan Dung, the prime minister, says that if growth is to continue at its current rate, the country's electricity-generating capacity needs to double by 2010. That seems a tall order, to put it mildly. Soaring car-ownership is leaving the country's underdeveloped roads increasingly gridlocked. In an admirably liberal attempt to limit price distortions as oil surged above $100 a barrel, the government slashed fuel subsidies in February. But one effect will be to stoke inflation, already worryingly high at 19.4% in March. Bank lending surged by 38% last year as firms and individuals borrowed to speculate on shares and property.The government is finding it much harder to manage an economy made up of myriad private companies, banks and investors than to issue instructions to a limited number of state institutions, especially as the public sector is currently suffering a drain of talent to private firms that are able to offer much higher pay. What could go wrongAll this leaves Vietnam's continued economic development exposed to a number of risks: • Rising inflation—which is hurting low earners in particular—and a growing shortage of affordable housing could create a new urban underclass among unskilled workers who have left the land for the cities. Combined with rising resentment at official corruption and the increasing visibility of Vietnam's new rich, this could cause social friction and bring strikes and protests, chipping away at the political stability that has underpinned Vietnam's strong growth and investment.• Trade liberalisation and increased domestic competition will benefit some firms and farmers but hurt others—especially inefficient state enterprises. These could join forces and press the government to halt or even reverse the reforms.• The slumping stockmarket or perhaps a property crash could cause a big firm or bank to fail. Given the country's weak and untested bankruptcy laws and financial regulators, the authorities may find it hard to deal with that kind of calamity.• Natural disasters, from bird flu to floods, could cause chaos.• The economy could come up against the limits of its creaking infrastructure and the shortage of people with higher skills. Jammed roads, power blackouts and the inability to fill managerial and professional jobs could all bring Vietnam's growth rate crashing down.Vietnam has set itself such demanding standards that even if some combination of these factors did no more than push annual growth below 5%, it would be seen as a serious setback. The foreign minister, Pham Gia Khiem, notes that Vietnam's current growth of around 8-9% is lower than that in Asia's richest economies at the same stage in their development. Despite the risks ahead, Vietnam has already provided the world with an admirable model for overcoming war, division, penury and isolation and growing strongly but equitably to reach middle-income status. This model could be followed by many impoverished African states or, closer to home, perhaps by North Korea. If it can be combined with gradual political liberalisation, it might even offer something for China to think about.

Will oil be the kiss of death for recovery?The price of oil has suddenly broken higher – to the point where triple-digit crude is once again in the offing.This week oil climbed to $87 a barrel, its highest level since October 2008. This was after a period of eight months when oil traded between $70 and $80, a narrow band that pleased oil producers without hurting consumers too much.The latest surge seems to have been prompted by rising confidence in a global economic recovery, even if most traders and bankers are still cautious about supply and demand fundamentals. The more bullish Wall Street banks see prices climbing further, with Barclays Capital forecasting $97, Goldman Sachs $110 and Morgan Stanley $100 next year.But the higher prices go, the deeper the concerns that they will stifle global growth. Jeff Rubin, a former CIBC chief economist and author of a book on oil and globalization, says: “Triple-digit oil prices are going to threaten a world recovery.”Pricier oil and other key commodities, notably iron ore and copper, could ripple through the economy and financial markets, potentially triggering inflation and forcing central banks to lift interest rates from ultra-low levels. This could force bond yields higher, but lower the attractions of equities.However, higher oil prices could lift energy shares. In the S&P 500 index, the energy sector is up just 2.4 per cent this year and was barely positive in the first quarter, lagging behind the index's 6 per cent gain for the year.Nicholas Colas, ConvergEx Group chief market strategist, says: “With crude oil prices marching steadily higher, portfolio exposure to the energy sector could well become a key determinant of overall investment performance through the balance of 2010.”Oil prices first hit $100 a barrel in January 2008, before continuing their rapid ascent to peak at $147 in July of that year. They fell to a low of $32 in December 2008, before recovering again. Yesterday oil traded at about $85 a barrel.The latest rise comes as the economic recovery fuels a jump in oil demand after the first global decline in a quarter century. Supply is not a worry, as the Opec oil cartel has more than 6m b/d of capacity to spare in a pinch.One difference from last year is that then the oil price was rising against the backdrop of a weaker dollar. This year crude and the dollar have risen together.Policymakers seem untroubled. Energy ministers at the International Energy Forum in Mexico last week embraced less volatility, not lower prices. Lawrence Summers, director of the US National Economic Council, in remarks this week bemoaned his country's dependence on foreign oil supplies, but did not complain about prices.Some economists do not view $80 oil as a threat to global growth, which the International Monetary Fund projects at 4 per cent this year. James Hamilton, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, is author of a paper that found oil's 2008 surge to $147 a barrel helped tip a housing-led slowdown into a recession. This time, the relatively steady nature of the price rebound has allowed consumers to adjust.“The shock value is gone now,” Prof Hamilton says.Hussein Allidina, commodity strategist at Morgan Stanley, says the $100 oil he predicts next year would increase the “oil burden” – a function of demand, prices and global output – to about 4 per cent from 2.8 per cent late last year. This would hurt developed economies more than emerging ones, as the latter are powering global growth and can afford fuel subsidies, he says. The IMF estimates consumer petroleum subsidies will reach almost $250bn this year. “If we were to move to $100 a barrel, economic growth would start to slow, but ‘derail' is likely too strong a word,” Mr Allidina says.A move to higher oil prices would not necessarily generate corresponding gains in retail fuel prices, as new refining capacity has made petrol markets more competitive. In the US, filling stations in most states still sell petrol for less than $3 a gallon, well below the peak of 2008. In the UK, however, petrol prices are close to record highs, even though crude is well below its peak.In any case, prices are as much an effect of the economic expansion as a threat to it. China, the fastest-growing economy, is alone expected to consume 520,000 b/d more this year than last, contributing a third of global demand growth, according to International Energy Agency estimates.“You can't have a global recovery without the oil price recovering as well,” says Lutz Kilian, a University of Michigan economist who has studied the effects of oil shocks. Because demand is fuelling prices, “the only way to keep oil prices down is to remain in a recession, which hardly sounds attractive”. The prospect of higher prices is still alarming to many observers. Olivier Jakob, of Swiss consultant Petromatrix, said in a note that the “recovery of 2009 was fuelled with crude oil at $62 a barrel, not at $90 a barrel or $100 a barrel. We fear that the latest run on WTI will be the kiss of death for a global economy that was trying to avoid the possibility of a double-dip recession.”When oil prices last surged to $100 a barrel in late 2007, US and other rich-country consumers blunted the impact by drawing on home-equity loans and credit cards to finance petrol purchases, says David Greely, energy economist at Goldman Sachs.“It does raise the issue if we're in a much more credit constrained world going forward, are consumers able to do that or will they be more sensitive?” he asks 高油价：死亡之吻？油价突然之间已经破位上行，三位数水平似乎再度触手可及。上周油价升至每桶87美元，为2008年10月以来的最高水平。此前8个月，油价一直运行在70-80美元这个狭窄区间内，这一价位既让石油生产国满意，也不至于给石油消费国造成太大损害。最新这轮涨势似乎是受到人们对全球经济复苏的信心日增的推动，尽管多数交易员和银行家对供需基本面依然抱着谨慎看法。较为乐观的华尔街银行预计油价将进一步上涨，其中巴克莱资本(Barclays Capital)预计明年油价会涨到97美元，高盛(Goldman Sachs)预计会涨到110美元，摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)预计涨到100美元。然而，油价涨得越高，人们就越是担心它会扼杀全球增长。加拿大帝国商业银行(CIBC)前首席经济学家杰夫•鲁宾(Jeff Rubin)表示：“油价如达到三位数水平，将危及全球复苏。”鲁宾写有一本论述石油与全球化的著作。石油及其它主要大宗商品（尤其是铁矿石和铜）价格上涨，可能对经济和金融市场产生连锁反应，触发通胀，迫使各央行提高目前处于极低水平的利率。这可能推高债券收益率，但会降低股票的吸引力。不过，油价上涨会利好能源股。在标普500指数中，能源板块今年以来仅上涨2.4%，其中在首季只是勉强维持上涨，而整体指数今年迄今已上涨6%。ConvergEx Group首席策略师尼古拉斯•克拉斯(Nicholas Colas)表示：“随着原油价格稳步走高，投资组合中的能源股敞口，很可能成为决定今年余下时间总体投资表现的一个关键因素。”油价第一次触及每桶100美元是在2008年1月。其后油价继续快速上行，至当年7月于147美元见顶。2008年12月，油价跌至32美元低点，后来再度回升。上周四油价处于每桶85美元附近。这次油价上涨的背景是：全球经济在度过25年来的首次衰退后，出现复苏，推动石油需求大幅增长。供应面没有问题，石油卡特尔组织欧佩克(Opec)必要时可立即启用逾600万桶/日的富余产能。与去年不同的一点是，当时油价上涨发生在美元走弱的背景下，而今年石油和美元一起上涨。各国政策制定者似乎没有觉得不安。最近在墨西哥举行的国际能源论坛(International Energy Forum)上，各国能源部长感到欢欣的是油价波动减小，而非价格走低。美国国家经济委员会(National Economic Council)主任劳伦斯•萨默斯(Lawrence Summers)上周发表讲话时，哀叹美国过度依赖外国石油，但没有抱怨油价。一些经济学家不认为每桶80美元的油价会对全球增长构成威胁。国际货币基金组织(IMF)预计今年全球经济将增长4%。加州大学圣迭戈分校的经济学家詹姆斯•汉密尔顿(James Hamilton)在一篇论文中指出，2008年油价飙升至每桶147美元，对住宅市场引发的经济放缓演变成衰退起到了推波助澜的作用。这次油价回升的势头相对平稳，让消费者能够适应。“现在冲击力消失了，”汉密尔顿表示。摩根士丹利大宗商品策略师侯赛因•阿里迪纳(Hussein Allidina)预计明年油价将达到每桶100美元水平。他表示，这将导致“石油负担”(oil burden)，即石油需求、价格与全球产出之间的一个函数，从去年底的2.8%升至4%左右。他说，发达经济体从中受到的损害将大于发展中经济体，因为后者正在推动全球增长，而且有能力发放燃油补贴。IMF估计，今年石油消费补贴总额将接近2500亿美元。如果油价升至每桶100美元，经济增长将开始放缓，但若说‘破坏'就可能言过其辞了，” 阿里迪纳表示。随着新增炼油产能使汽油市场竞争加剧，原油价格上涨未必会带动燃油零售价相应幅度的上涨。在美国多数州的加油站，汽油售价仍不到每加仑3美元，远低于2008年时的峰值。不过，在英国，汽油价格接近历史高位，尽管原油价格远低于历史最高水平。总之，油价既受到经济扩张的推动，也对经济扩张构成威胁。据国际能源机构(IEA)估计，在全球增长最快的经济体中国，今年石油日消费量将同比增加52万桶，占全球需求增量的三分之一。“在全球复苏的形势下，油价不可能不回升，”研究过石油冲击影响的密歇根大学经济学家卢茨•基连(Lutz Kilian)表示。因为需求正在推高价格，“要使油价保持在低位，唯一的办法是让经济继续维持衰退，这听上去一点都不吸引人。”不过，油价上涨的前景仍让许多观察家感到担心。瑞士咨询公司Petromatrix的奥利维尔•雅各布(Olivier Jakob)在一份研究简报中称：“2009年的复苏是由每桶62美元的原油推动的，不是每桶90美元、也不是每桶100美元。我们担心，对于正在设法避免双底衰退的全球经济来说，WTI(西德克萨斯州中质原油)的最新走势将是死亡之吻。”高盛能源经济学家戴维•格瑞利(David Greely)表示，上次油价在2007年底逼近100美元时，美国及其它富裕国家的消费者使用房屋净值贷款和信用卡支付汽油费用，淡化了油价上涨的影响。“现在面临一个问题，如果今后信贷紧缩状况明显超过以往，消费者还能这么做吗，或者他们将变得更加敏感？”