Thailand Economy Research

        The country our group chooses is Thailand. It is a developing country with over 10 million population.

Part one:

        At the very beginning, we would like to introduce the demographic characteristics of Thailand. The Thai population amounted to 67,720,153 of inhabitants in the year 2011.

        The population rate growth in 2011 is approximately of 0.6% a year. Statistics show that the birth rate is 12.95 births/1,000 population while the death rate is 7.29 deaths/1,000 population. As a result, we conclude that the demographic transition of Thailand is stage three because there is a declining birth rate and a low death rate.  

        Then, we find the population distribution histogram online as follow:

        From the picture, we can tell that working-aged people have the greatest proportion in the whole population, which means Thailand has its demographic dividends because a large amount of labor makes great contributions to country’s economic growth.[pic 1]

        Thailand’s urban population is 34% of total population. From 2010 to 2015, it is estimated that the annual rate of change of urbanization is 1.8% of the whole population.

        The next histogram indicates the population distribution in Thailand in the next 40 years:[pic 2]

        The working-age population will decreasing and Thailand will become an aging population. This will lead to less demographic dividends because of lack of labor and more government burdens on pensions.

Part two:

[pic 3]        Thailand locates in Southeastern Asia, bordering the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand, southeast of Burma. The biggest natural resource is mineral, such as tin, tungsten, tantalum, lead, lignite, fluorite. Since it belongs to the tropical monsoon climate, which is good for the growth of rubber trees, Thailand has a lot of rubber resources. Other natural resources are natural gas, timber, fish, arable land.

        In the last 20 years, Thailand has a very stable development. The rocketing up of the internet users since the end of 20th century in Thailand shows its fast development of communication.[pic 4]

        Due to the geographic location, Thailand controls the only land route from Asia to Malaysia and Singapore. So Thailand built lots of railways to goods transport in the past. However, since the transportation develops all over the world, the air transportation is gradually replacing the traditional land transportation in Thailand.

[pic 5]

Part three:

        Among Thailand’s population, about 19.9% is 0-14 year-old children. 70.9% of population is 15- 64 year-old working-aged people. The rest is people who are 65 years old or over. Thailand’s sex ratio is 0.98 male(s)/female in total population, which means female in Thailand is a little bit more than male. In the level of education, the school life expectancy from primary to tertiary education is 12 years. In detail, male complete 12 years in school while female receive 13 years. Through the research, we figure out that Thailand’s net migration rate is 0.3 migrant(s)/1,000 population. In our point of views, the reason why Thailand is experiencing positive net immigration is that Thailand specializes in the jobs which require a lot of low-skilled labor such as manufacturing and textile, etc. Thus, a lot of people would like to immigrate into Thailand because it is much easier to them to find jobs without high level of education and skill. Also, from school life expectancy, we think that another reason that people choose to immigrate in Thailand is that their children will get access to a stable, fundamental education for free in Thailand.

Part four:

        Due to devastating floods, poor fiscal position, slow progress in raising infrastructure financing, pertinent political risks and the downward revision in high-speed rail plans, Thailand is now suffering an enduring decline in the country's social construction activity. However, the Social infrastructure real growth still reaches 3.2% (previously 2.2%) in 2012.[pic 6]

From the Economic Freedom Index annual report, Thailand ranks the 48th in 2009, which is steadily improving. Specifically, Thailand's freedom to trade internationally and regulation of credit, labor and business are advanced in the world. However, its access to sound money, and legal structure and security of property rights still ranks low.  [pic 7]

Also from the corruption perception index, Thailand ranks the 80th. It shows Thailand still need to work on anti-corruption and improving people's standard of living to achieve a greater growth speed.

Part five:

        The important data we observe for Thailand in Global Competitiveness Report are these as followed.

        Thailand, as has been in rank 39th, drops one positions from last year’s. This is the result of the global economic downturn and the severe political turmoil in the country, which led to poor infrastructure and poor innovation. Also, the consequences, thus, effects the country’s economy which is expected to decrease between 3 and 4 percent in 2011. Unsurprisingly, the quality of public institutions continues to drop to rank 67th. Public health problem (rank 83rd), especially from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria are all major concerns. Thailand’s technological readiness is also shrinking (rank 82nd). Although mobile telephony penetration is among the densest in the world, the use of the internet and computers remains insufficient. Looking at the more positive aspects of Thailand’s performance, the macroeconomic situation improved slightly between 2011 and 2012 (rank 28rd).The efficiency of the labor market (rank 27th) constitutes another strength. Finally, the domestic market size (rank 23rd) and foreign market size (rank 16th) are potentially managed.

Part six:

[pic 8]   Despite these common major exports in all countries, most of thailand's exports are manufacturing like machinery, electronic components and agriculture goods, because of the cheap price of labor and land. Other exports are based on its factor abundance as well.[pic 9]

        The only difference between Thailand's major exports and major imports is the imports of copper and aluminum, which means these two kinds of metal are Thailand's factor scarcity.

        The pattern of exports and imports in Thailand does makes sense, since it obeys the Heckscher-Ohlin (HO) Trade Model. It exports the goods using the factor it enjoys the factor abundance, which means it specializes in where Thailand's comparative advantage lies in, and vice versa.
Part seven: