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Book Review: Development policies in natural resource economies

tricity pricing in England and Wales, Norway and Sweden!). After reading this collection I felt that to the degree that free trade is taken as an objective, then yes, negotiations towards more efficient trade regimes should also take into account regulatory regimes. Indeed, deregulation (or at least the promise of regulatory reform) has often been a condition of entry to the WTO. Yet, what is a ‘‘valid regulation’ necessary to protect citizens’ health and welfare, and what is an ‘excessive regulation’ that is ‘trade distorting’? At the end of the day, the real challenge is to find ways to achieve international agreement on a competition policy that is socially efficient. As is often argued, though, economic analysis is limited in this regard and usually revolves around static efficiency concerns, such as market failure. Rarely do economists consider the important cultural and political factors that shape the debates around regulatory reform. Still, in the opening chapter Roger G. Noll does at least acknowledge the possibility of ‘cultural externalities’, which aim to protect some users on economic sectors on social grounds. This issue is not to be dismissed so lightly as in this study, however. Asian cultural attitudes in particular are well known for compensating the ‘losers’ (farmers, small shop keepers, other marginal groups or regions) in economic development with subsidies or protection from international competition, rather than the laissez-faire ‘winner takes all’ attitude of western economics. It would have been interesting to have a concluding chapter in this book, one that drew some of the lessons of the individual country case studies together. For instance, although never treated formally in this collection, some countries’ growth (including Japan) was due in part to shielding certain sectors from international competition in the early growth period of these economies. This raises the question at what point does deregulation become feasible or desirable in any country. Unfortunately, this collection was assembled before the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis and there is no discussion of this important event. Much debate has occurred about the liberalization of financial services in Southeast and Northeast Asia, and the degree to which this contributed towards the instability of the region as a whole. Paradoxically, those economies that deregulated markets in line with western goals were most impacted by volatile capital flows. Malaysia, for instance, has been conspicuous for introducing strong controls over capital inflows and outflows, and has to date avoided International Monetary Fund intervention when compared with South Korea and Thailand. The pace of reform in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) group and the implementation of the Asian Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) will provide a good indicator of the difficulties ahead. (The individual deregulation actions of individual APEC countries since this book was written can be viewed at http://www.apecsec.org.sg/ deregulation/ dereg9.html.)