Since the launch of Bitcoin in 2009, the spectacular rise and fall of cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology have attracted global attention. While the application of distributed ledger technology presents great economic and business potential, significant volatility and...

Rapid technological development makes skills depreciate faster than in the past while new technologies generate gaps in workers' skills and call for the acquisition of proper skills and lifelong learning. Proper skill mixes for future jobs include strong cognitive skills, basic information and...

This study evaluates the impact of "group subsidies," a policy intervention to repair and reinstall damaged capital goods and facilities of small and medium-sized enterprises after the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami. In addition to their direct effect on firms that received the...

We create two novel datasets - the starting dates of Roll-On Roll-Off Terminal System (RRTS) service by route, and interprovincial land trade - to evaluate the effects of the RRTS on agricultural trade costs within the Philippines as measured by border effects. We find province border effects to...

The insulating properties of flexible exchange rates have long been a highly contentious issue in emerging markets - not least in Asian emerging markets. A number of recent theoretical and empirical studies question whether a trade-off exists between rigid exchange rate regimes and insulation...

Agglomeration theory supports and existing findings confirm the geographical proximity of similar firms and spatial attraction of firms to universities. In addition to that, we are able to identify whether universities as one type of innovative units are attracted by firm-type innovators and the...

This paper aims at identifying effective macroprudential policy (MPP) interventions and analysing the macroeconomic conditions that promote them. We define effective MPP interventions as those that stabilize its underlying target variable, such as credit growth, house price growth, etc. For our...

To explore the determinants of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending expansion, this study examines factors that impact P2P lending using a sample of 62 economies over the period 2015-2017. We investigate the effects of financial development and financial literacy on the expansion of P2P lending. The level...

This study examines the impact of bond markets on both bank profit and cost efficiency. By employing the stochastic frontier approach and utilizing a large micro dataset for 926 banks covering 27 economies from the Asia and Pacific region over the period from 2004 to 2017, we find that both the...

Benchmarking is intended to help gauge where economies rank relative to others. However, historically educational benchmarking has often elected to use indicators based on their ease of availability, rather than a clear and defined link between inputs and learning outcomes. In this paper, we...