Over the last decade, developing Asia’s deeper global financial linkages have been accompanied by greater financial integration. As the region becomes more interconnected, a key priority is to ensure that the dynamic environment is supported by better coordinated and potentially consistent...

Existing literature on economic growth and structural change relies on trade data to make pronouncements about a country's competitiveness and long-term growth prospects through the acquisition of capabilities. However, insufficient data give us a limited view of what is happening within the...

This paper analyzes the behavior of gross capital inflows across 34 emerging markets (EMs), including eight Asian economies. We first confirm that aggregate inflows to EMs comove considerably. Three findings are reported: (i) the aggregate comovement conceals significant heterogeneity across...

Asia's rapid population aging fortifies the case for strengthening human capital investments. Further, the experience of the newly industrialized economies suggests that human capital investments will be a vital ingredient of the transition from middle income to high income. Those investments...

Poverty reduction in the Asia and the Pacific region in 2005-2008 had been quite significant. Despite the global crisis, an estimated 150 million people exited extreme poverty by 2008 - from 903.4 million in 2005 to 753.5 million, bringing the percentage of people living under the $1.25 per day...

Income growth in rural areas may be one of the greatest challenges to further poverty reduction and economic development. Using a new survey of rural Bhutanese households we investigate the short-term economic, social, and psychosocial benefits of a vocational skills training program that was...

Contingent claims analysis applied to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, and Thailand shows no particular vulnerability to sovereign debt distress during recent years. However, the highly volatile "distance to distress" measure suggests that any of these countries may...

This paper investigates the role of 'absorptive capacity' to manage unexpected shocks to their real economy, with a focus on small, open, natural resource-dependent economies. A quarterly panel data series for 45 countries is constructed, including 23 developing Asian countries for empirical...

While structural transformation, driven by technological progress, productivity growth, and capital deepening, has contributed to Asia's sustained rapid growth, its effect on income inequality is uncertain. The central objective of our paper is to empirically examine the effect of structural...

This paper examines underlying factors that could explain the decline in income inequality in the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2008 and inquires whether the decline indicates that the PRC's income inequality has peaked following the Kuznets hypothesis. The paper first identifies four...