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Living in the Lands Threatened

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An Economic Inquiry into the Nonlinear Behaviors of Nations

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Abstract

Many phenomena with regard to the social and economic development of the contemporary world cannot be explained by traditional economic theories. For example, external threats, which can be represented by various threats of attacks or sanctions that are exerted from external sources, are generally considered to be harmful for the improvement of the domestic investment environment, which in turn discourage cross-border trade and the inflow of foreign capital, among others. However, a time-series comparison of South Korea and Taiwan reveals that external threats have almost served as a positive factor, contributing to their respective GDP growth rates for most, if not all, years from 1960 to 2015. In addition, it is a puzzle that the unified Germany as a whole has won fewer Olympic medals than either East or West Germany did during the 1977–1988 Games. But not all external threats and psychological pressures are helpful—to serve as incentives for domestic development, they must be predictable or manageable.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Calculated by author based on http://www.stat.go.jp/data/kokusei/2010/special/english/index.htm and http://populationpyramid.net/republic-of-korea/ (all accessed 2014-12-12).

  2. 2.

    This has been well described by one of my Korean friends (Hwang 1993, 1).

  3. 3.

    Cited from Hwang (1993, 1).

  4. 4.

    The crisis started at 5:30 p.m. on August 23, 1958, with thousands of soldiers being killed in the first month of heavy exchange of fire. Afterward, both sides continued to bombard each other with shells containing propaganda leaflets on alternate days of the week. This informal arrangement continued until 1979.

  5. 5.

    We set the starting year of analysis as 1960 since the data from the pre-1960 years are not available. In what follows in this chapter, unless stated otherwise, all the average multiyear GDP growth rates of South Korea and Taiwan are calculated by author, based on the World Bank Database.

  6. 6.

    Sources: Kirkbride (1984), Nanto (2003), and Global Security (2005).

  7. 7.

    For example, the Taiwan Stock Exchange Index started at about 5000 in the early 1989, then rocketed to 12,495 by February 1990, but plummeted even more sharply to about 2500 just seven months later (Champion 1997, 10–11).

  8. 8.

    In 2000, President Kim Dae Jung was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his successful implementation of the Sunshine Policy.

  9. 9.

    Source: Author, based on miscellaneous news clippings.

  10. 10.

    See Sect. “Enemy’s Enemy as Friend” in Chap. 5 for more details.

  11. 11.

    Cited from Fan (2014), which is based on the data released by the Bureau of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Chung-Hua Institute for Economic Research, Taipei, Taiwan.

  12. 12.

    See, for example, Smith (1963, 16–17, 28–9) and Brams and Taylor (1996, 144) for more details.

  13. 13.

    Cited from Zhabskaya (2002).

  14. 14.

    Cited from http://www.reaganfoundation.org/reagan/speeches/wall.asp (accessed 2015-12-6).

  15. 15.

    Cited from Pond (1990, 7–8).

  16. 16.

    Source: http://www.london.diplo.de (accessed 2016-1-3).

  17. 17.

    Calculated by author, based on the World Bank Database. This also applies to the other GDP growth figures in the rest of this section.

  18. 18.

    Examples of the literature on the theoretical and empirical studies of the unification and breakup of nations would include Friedman (1977), Bolton and Spolaore (1996), Bolton and Roland (1997), and Alesina and Spolaore (1997).

  19. 19.

    See, for example, Dahl and Tufle (1973), and Alesina and Spolaore (1997).

  20. 20.

    See, for example, Fulbrook (2015, 164–82) for a comprehensive and balanced account of the events occurring in East Germany from 1961 to 1988.

  21. 21.

    Cited from Tagliabue (February 12, 1991) and Janofsky (December 3, 1991).

  22. 22.

    See, for example, Haas et al. (2005) and Mann (2005) for more detailed analyses.

  23. 23.

    Available at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/garden/columbus.html (accessed 2015-10-8).

  24. 24.

    In the learned helplessness studies, an animal is repeatedly exposed to an aversive stimulus which it cannot escape. Eventually, the animal stops trying to avoid the stimulus and behaves as if it is helpless to change the situation. When opportunities to escape become available, learned helplessness means that the animal does not take any action. See Seligman and Maier (1967) and Overmier and Seligman (1967) for more details.

  25. 25.

    See Seligman (1975) and Carlson (2010, 409).

  26. 26.

    Cited from Selwood (September 2, 2014).

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  1. Peking University, Beijing, China

    Rongxing Guo

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Guo, R. (2017). Living in the Lands Threatened. In: An Economic Inquiry into the Nonlinear Behaviors of Nations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48772-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48772-4_4

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