| 学位取得者氏名: |
Bounlouane Douangngeune |
| 学位名: |
博士(国際開発研究) |
| 授与年月日: |
平成17年3月25日 |
| 論文名: |
Education and Natural Resources in Economic Development: Thailand Compared
with Japan and Korea |
| 主査: |
速水 佑次郎 |
| 論文審査委員: |
大来 洋一
Kaliappa Kalirajan
神門 善久(明治学院大学助教授)
澤田 康幸(東京大学経済学部助教授)
大山 達雄 |
I 論文内容要旨
I-1 Objectives and findings
Why Thailand lagged behind Japan in entering the “epoch of modern
economic growth” in the definition of Simon Kuznets (1966) in spite of
their similar initial conditions in the mid-19th century has been one of
the major puzzles in the modern history of East Asia. This study aims to
shed light on this question from the aspect of the interactions between
education and natural resource endowments. The basic hypothesis tested
in this study is that Thailand, which was traditionally endowed with abundant
natural resources relative to Japan, has felt it less compelling to increase
the productivities of the resources for surviving in international competition
and, hence has had smaller incentives to invest in education as a key variable
for promoting agricultural intensification and industrialization beyond
the scope of traditional rice farming.
This study tries to test this hypothesis by means of both the documentation
of institutional changes in the course of economic development and an econometric
analysis based on newly prepared long-term time-series data. Korea, in
addition to Japan and Thailand, is included in the comparison as it represents
a case characterized by meager natural resource endowments similar to Japan
and has achieved better educational and economic developments than Thailand
after World War II. While the quantitative analysis will mainly pertain
to the period after World War II, the study of institutions that influenced
educational development and economic changes in these countries, particularly
Thailand and Japan, will cover the period from the latter half of the 19th
century when both countries began to actively participate in trade with
Western nations.
Entering into international trade at the same time under different
endowments of natural resources, Thailand and Japan experienced different
patterns of economic growth involving different institutional changes in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Throughout those years, rice cultivation
based on traditional technologies was the major source of food and income
for Thailand, and its educational development objective in the late 19th
century did not extend beyond the purpose of training a limited number
of top elite for staffing government offices under the king. Mass education
was not promoted until the early 1920s, and an overall economic development
policy was not initiated until the early 1960s.
Unlike Thailand, Japan, under strong population pressure on limited
land resources, has had to promote modern economic growth based on productivity
improvements in agriculture and industry since the Meiji Restoration. Meiji
Japan invested heavily in building modern economic institutions including
education and research in support of modern economic growth. It began to
promote mass education in the early 1870s.
An econometric test by applying the cointegration and error correction
regression models on pooled time-series data of Thailand, Japan, and Korea
confirms the negative effects of land resource endowments on educational
investment, agricultural intensification, and industrialization. It also
confirms the positive effects of the educational stock on agricultural
intensification and industrialization. These results imply that Thailand
failed to effectively mobilize the incomes generated from the exploitation
of natural resources for investment in physical and institutional infrastructure
including education and research. Such investments are critically important
for bringing about modern economic growth involving the processes of agricultural
intensification and industrialization.
Thailand, however, did not entirely neglect investment in education
and other infrastructure for modern economic growth during its vent-for-surplus
development stage. Though much slower than in Japan, by the 1970s, Thailand’s
stock of education as measured by the average number of years of schooling
per person in the working-age population had reached the level of Japan
in the 1920s, which could well be sufficient to support the spurt of labor-intensive
industries. It is most likely that accumulated investment in education
since the vent-for-surplus stage had prepared an important condition for
Thailand to join in the East Asian Miracle in the recent three decades.
Yet, it is also very likely that, if Thailand had used its incomes
obtained from the exploitation of natural resources more efficiently, its
entry into epoch of modern economic growth would not have lagged so far
behind Japan. Thailand’s experience in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
seems to imply that today’s developing countries endowed with abundant
natural resources will not be able to achieve sustainable economic growth
unless they effectively mobilize incomes generated from the exploitation
of their abundant natural resources for investment in education and research,
among others, to support agricultural intensification and industrialization.
I-2 Organization
This dissertation is organized as follows:
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Theoretical framework
Chapter 3 Data sources and estimation procedures
Chapter 4 Historical overview of educational and economic developments in Thailand compared with Japan and Korea
Chapter 5 Econometric tests
Bibliography
Appendix
Chapter 1 specifies the objectives and approaches of the dissertation.
Chapter 2 discusses the theoretical issues concerning the importance
and determinants of educational development for long-term economic growth
through detailed review of the relevant literature. This chapter argues
that educational development plays a vital role in economic development
because it enhances people’s information processing ability, which is
important not only for workers to perform a certain task more effectively
using a given technology, but also for facilitating development and the
adoption of new technologies. However, educational development is a complicated
process with its scale and speed affected by various factors including
social environments and resource endowments. Two countries with similar
social environments but different natural resource endowments may have
different timing in accelerating investment in education for entering modern
economic growth characterized by productivity improvements in both agriculture
and industry. The chapter will also postulate basic hypotheses on the effect
of abundant natural resource endowments on the lag of Thailand relative
to Japan and Korea in entering the “epoch of modern economic growth”
in the Kuznets definition.
Chapter 3 is devoted to explaining the data sources and the procedures
of preparing the data of macroeconomic statistics such as GDP, population,
and labor force as well as the data on educational investment and educational
stock in Thailand. GDP will be measured in 1990 US dollars in terms of
purchasing power parity and labor force in employed persons in the working-age
population (the 15-64 year-old population). School enrollment ratio in
the school-age population (the 6-20 year-old population) and school enrollment
ratios by different levels of education will be used as proxies of investment
in education, whereas the average number of years of schooling per person
in the working-age population will be used as a proxy of the educational
stock. This chapter also explains the sources of data for the proxies of
natural resource endowments, agricultural intensification, and industrialization
in the three countries under study.
Using historical documents together with the data prepared in Chapter
3, Chapter 4 compares among Thailand, Japan, and Korea in terms of their
natural resource endowments, economic and educational developments since
the late 19th century in order to provide a concrete historical perspective
on the hypotheses to be tested in Chapter 5. The comparison involves different
policy choices that caused different economic and educational developments
in these three countries. It is confirmed that Thailand has been more favorably
endowed with land resources, while its economic growth involving the processes
of agricultural intensification and industrialization as well as educational
development have been slower compared with those of Japan and Korea. These
descriptive statistics provide intuitive support for the hypothesis that
Thailand’s slower economic development compared with Japan and Korea has
been largely due to its slower educational development induced by its more
abundant endowments of land resources. This hypothesis implies that abundant
land resource endowments have a negative effect on educational investment,
resulting in slower growth in the stock of education that is crucial for
modern economic growth. Abundant land endowments may also impede modern
economic growth directly because they may give a negative incentive on
the provision of public support other than education for agricultural and
industrial productivity improvements.
Chapter 5 attempts econometric analyses of the three operational hypotheses
emerging from the discussions in the previous chapter. The cointegration
and error correction regression models applied on pooled time-series data
of Thailand, Japan, and Korea are used to test the following three operational
hypotheses: (1) land resource endowments have a negative effect on educational
investment, (2) educational stock has a positive effect on agricultural
intensification, while land resource endowments give a negative incentive
on the provision of public support other than education for agricultural
intensification, and (3) educational stock has a positive effect on industrialization,
but land resource endowments give a negative incentive on the provision
of public support other than education for industrialization. The regression
results confirm these hypotheses.
Chapter 6 concludes the study and provides some policy implications.
U 審査要旨
この論文は、19世紀中ごろから西欧列強の圧力の下に開国を迫られたタイと日本とを比較して、種々の条件において類似した2国のうち、なぜ近代的経済発展においてタイが日本に比して大きな遅れをとったかという東アジア近代史の大問題に答えを与えようとする野心的な試みである。
タイと日本は、(1)伝統的に稲作を中心とする経済であり、(2)文化的には仏教を共有し、(3)ほぼ同じ時期に西欧から通商を迫られながら、(4)植民化から免れることができ、(5)立憲君主制の下に近代化の道を歩んできた。このような多面的な類似性にもかかわらず、サイモン・クズネッツが定義した「科学知識を生産活動に応用することによって国民1人当たり平均所得の継続的な増加を実現する」ことを特徴とする近代経済成長(Modern Economic Growth)に入るにあたってタイが一世紀近くも日本に遅れたのはなぜだったのか。
本論文は、その原因を天然資源、なかんずく農耕可能な土地の賦存量の差に求める。すなわちタイには耕作可能な土地が大量に存在し、人口増加につれ、伝統的な耕作方法のままで耕作面積を拡大し、食糧の国内需要を満たすのみか、海外に輸出して国にとって必要な外貨を稼ぐことができた。そこでは農耕技術の近代化や工業化を推進する必要性は強く感じられなかったであろう。その点において、タイは開国の時期から耕作面積を拡大する余地に乏しかった日本とは大きく異なり、したがって農業の近代化や工業開発への努力において日本に遅れを取ったと考えられる。
この仮説の妥当性は、韓国を比較に加えることによって強化される。韓国は日本によって植民地化されたという不利な条件にもかかわらず、第2次大戦後独立を果たしてからの経済成長はめざましく、タイをはるかに上まわる高所得水準を達成した。この差をもたらした要因のひとつとして、日本とならび土地賦存において不利であった韓国において農業近代化や工業化の必要性がタイにおけるよりはるかに高かったからであると考えるのは不自然ではなかろう。
以上の基礎仮説を検証するため、本研究はタイにつき、日本および韓国と比較可能な形で、1885-1995年にわたる長期時系列資料を整備し、計量経済学的分析をおこなった。天然資源賦存の豊富さが経済成長に不利に働くとする仮説は新しいものでもなく、それについての計量分析もおこなわれてきた。しかしこれまでの研究はすべて1時点における多国間横断面(cross-section)資料にもとづく分析であり、資源賦存の多い国の成長率が低いという傾向は確認できても、どのような過程を通して資源賦存のマイナス効果が実現したかは分析されえなかった。
本研究の時系列的分析は、この点で大きな独創性を持つ。すなわち、資源賦存量という変数と農業近代化や工業化を代表する変数との間に教育と言う変数を入れて分析する。クズネッツの定義による近代経済成長の特徴は科学知識の生産過程への応用であり、その基礎は学校教育に基づく人的資本(human capital)の増加にあることは明らかであろう。そこで本研究は、まず学校教育に対する投資の指標として就学率を選び、これと土地資源賦存量の指標との回帰式を推定して土地賦存の豊富さが教育に対する投資を減退させる傾向を確認する。さらに過去の就学率を累積することによって求められる国民1人当たりの平均就学年数を農業近代化および工業化の指標とに回帰させ、前者の後者に対する効果がプラスで統計的に有意であることを明らかにした。かくしてタイにおける土地賦存の豊富さが日本や韓国に比して低位な教育投資をもたらし、それにもとづく人的資本形成の遅れが、近代経済成長への参加を遅らせたという因果関係の連鎖が統計的に確認されたわけである。
これら計量経済分析に用いられたモデルはきわめて簡単なものであるが、サンプル数が限られ、過去に遡るほど観測誤差の大きい長期時系列データに対しては適切であり、その結果は頑強性(robustness)を持つと考えられる。また単純なモデルながら、その推定には先端的な時系列分析の手法が適切に応用されている。さらに強調すべきは、本研究が過去約1世紀にわたる期間について、日本や韓国と比較可能な形でタイの時系列データを作成した点である。統計の整備に遅れた途上国につき、その作業はきわめて困難であり、その成果としてまとめられたdata appendixは今後世界の多くの研究者にとってきわめて貴重な分析素材となるであろう。
以上をまとめれば、本研究は(1)東アジア近代史における重要な疑問点の解明を目指し、(2)タイにつき日本と韓国と比較可能な長期的時系列データを作成し、(3)単純ながら頑強なモデルを先端的な手法で推定し、(4)タイがその相対的に豊富な土地資源に恵まれていたがゆえに教育投資につき相対的に不熱心であり、その結果として近代経済成長において日本や韓国の遅れることとなった過程を明らかにした点において、きわめて大きな学術的貢献であると思われる。この評価は、本論分の要約版が、すでにアジア経済研究における有力な国際的学術誌Journal of Asian Economics(オランダのElsevier社刊行)の審査をパスし、掲載予定になっていることによっても裏付けられている。
最後に、本研究の国際開発政策に対する貢献について一言を加えよう。元来、ある国の天然資源が豊富であることは、その国の発展にとって有利な条件なはずである。現在でも、アジアのカンボジアやラオス、あるいは東アフリカや中南米の多くの国々は、人口に比して豊富な天然資源の開発を通じて発展する余地は大きい。だが、天然資源は開発すればやがて涸渇するもので、それに頼っていては経済成長は永続しない。本研究の示すところは、タイのように資源の豊富な国は、その発展の初期において資源開発からもたらされる収入(一般にresource rentと呼ばれる)を教育をはじめとする近代経済成長に必要なインフラ整備に対して有効に投資してこそ、急速にして永続的な発展が保証されるのである。本研究の政策的含意は正にこの点にあるといえよう。
以上によって、審査委員会は、本論文を理論及び政策分析の双方において博士論文にふさわしい学問的業績であると結論する。
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