Our previous assessment of debt sustainability in developing Asia, conducted in 2011, found that the region's fiscal outlook was mostly benign. In this study we update the debt sustainability assessment, taking stock of the latest data and including a larger number of countries. With the benefit...

Intense climate-related disasters — floods, storms, droughts, and heat waves — have been on the rise worldwide. At the same time and coupled with an increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, temperatures, on average, have been rising, and are becoming more variable and...

While the economic literature has yet to establish whether greater electricity consumption leads to faster economic growth, or vice versa, it is widely accepted that the better provision of electricity can enable pro-poor growth. Because electricity consumption is expected to grow in emerging...

This study examines the role of special economic zones (SEZs) within the trade policy of Cambodia. It asks whether Cambodia's establishment of SEZs since late 2005 has been successful, based on the evidence to date, and analyzes the appropriate role and management of SEZs over the next decade or...

The literature on the finance-growth nexus highlights the importance of the financial cycle for the estimation of potential output of an economy. We estimate potential output growth for the G-5 countries, as well as for 10 high- and middle-income Asian economies, using a multivariate model that...

Climate policy pledges and negotiations involve commitments about the reduction of emissions within national borders. However, the rise of global value chains has changed the nature of production and international trade, blurring the attribution of ultimate responsibility for emissions. This...

This paper studies how status competition for marriage partners can generate surprising effects on the real exchange rate (RER). In theory, a rise in the sex ratio (increasing relative surplus of men) can generate a decline in the RER. The effect can be quantitatively large if the biological...

Structural changes in the global agrifood value chain have transformed food production in developing countries including Indonesia. One element of this is the spread of supermarket retailing. By increasing the demand for and returns to higher quality produce, this development has the potential...

In the postglobal financial crisis period, the central banks of the advanced economies pursued unconventional monetary policies, such as the United States (US) Federal Reserve's quantitative easing (QE). Those policies and their unwinding may significantly affect cross-border capital flows and...

This paper provides an analysis of financial development and inclusion in developing Asia using data from a wide array of sources. We show that in terms of aggregate measures of financial development, the region as a whole has superior banking sector depth compared to other developing regions;...