The recent history of economic and social development has shown that while contemporary development models succeed in increasing the wealth and wellbeing of mankind around the world, they also suffer from a number of shortcomings: they emphasize too much on financial success (like GDP) at the expense of other important dimensions of development, they bring in occasional but more frequent crises of various sort, they entail numerous social, such as disparity, and environmental illnesses. In short, the current development models are not sustainable. While Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is an attempt to achieve sustainable development by setting up goals that would steer the development in right direction, it lacks description of how those goals should be achieved. Rather, SDGs recognize that countries may have their own ways to achieve the goals. In this paper, we argue that Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP), invented by the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, offers an alternative path to sustainable development. Key differences of SEP from other development models are that (a) it is a more holistic way of development, with physical and spiritual betterment simultaneously being sought, (b) it regards development as a multi-dimensional endeavor from the outset and, (c) it recognizes the role of communities and voluntary participation in development as important components on the path to sustainable development. We use a simple model that links SEP to sustainable development outcomes and test it with a newly-constructed system of indicators that captures SEP principles held by Thai people and a number of ultimate development outcomes. Our results find positive contributions of SEP to sustainable development outcomes. The indicators can thus be used to monitor both SEP and sustainable development. Keywords: Path to sustainable development, Development Indicators, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Sufficiency, economy philosophy
The present paper uses a panel dataset to estimate the marginal returns to different types of government expenditure on agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction in Thailand. The study finds that additional government spending on agricultural research provides the largest return in terms of agricultural productivity and has the second largest impact on rural poverty reduction. Increased investment in rural electrification has the largest poverty reduction impact, mainly through improved nonfarm employment. Rural education has the third largest impact on both productivity and poverty reduction. Irrigation has a positive impact on agricultural productivity, but regional variation is considerable. Government spending on rural roads has no significant impact on agricultural productivity and its poverty reduction impact ranks last among all investment alternatives considered. Additional investment in the Northeast Region has a greater impact on poverty reduction than in other regions.
Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The views expressed in this paper are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of ADBI, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), its Board of Directors, or the governments they represent. ADBI does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this paper and accepts no responsibility for any consequences of their use. Terminology used may not necessarily be consistent with ADB official terms. Terms of use: Documents inThe Working Paper series is a continuation of the formerly named Discussion Paper series; the numbering of the papers continued without interruption or change. ADBI's working papers reflect initial ideas on a topic and are posted online for discussion. ADBI encourages readers to post their comments on the main page for each working paper (given in the citation below). Some working papers may develop into other forms of publication. AbstractThis paper reviews Thailand's structural changes, the 1997 crisis experience, and recovery and lessons from the crisis. The paper then discusses the impacts of the subprime crisis on the Thai economy and the policy responses to date. The paper ends by discussing strategies to rebalance growth by reducing the dependence on exports as the main growth engine.The recovery from the 1997 crisis left Thailand more dependent than ever on exports as the main engine of growth, with the ratio of exports to gross domestic product (GDP) increasing from a precrisis level of about 38% to about 65% recently. The lessons learned from the 1997 crisis led to a more risk-averse financial system, and this helped Thailand avoid the direct impacts of the subprime crisis. However, being highly dependent on exports, Thailand, along with other export oriented East Asian economies, is now heavily affected by the indirect impacts of the subprime crisis, especially in the export industries. Exports and GDP have dropped sharply over the past two quarters.The government has been using fiscal stimulus and monetary easing measures to try to improve the economy. These measures are mostly short-term in nature, and if the subprime crisis is protracted, then the sustainability of the fiscal stimulus will be called into question. In the medium-to long-term, Thailand needs to move to a more balanced growth path, depending less on exports (although exports will still be important) and more on other, domestic sources of growth. The paper concludes by discussing a number of policy strategies that will contribute...
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