A crisis provides an opportunity to examine how an economy works under pathological conditions. What are the lessons? Markets work well most of the time. That said, the global financial crisis has weakened faith in the market's self-equilibrating qualities. Fiscal policy works well to offset...

It would be easy to say that central banks should consider asset prices as one of the objectives to avoid boom and bust cycles, as happened in the 2007-2009 crisis; the dotcom bubble of 2001; and the Japanese boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s. However, its implementation would be theoretically...

The central objective of this paper is to empirically examine the issue of fiscal sustainability in developing Asia. To do so, we first diagnose the region's public finances by analyzing the evolution of key fiscal indicators over time and across subregions. We then estimate fiscal policy...

This paper calculates the decline in costs involving merchandise trade between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and India during the period 1980-2008. Drawing from the recent literature, a comprehensive measure of trade costs is derived from a theory-founded gravity model of international...

Upstream nonpoint source pollution has become a significant threat to urban drinking water safety in the People's Republic of China. Payment for environmental services (PES) is seen as a promising mechanism to deal with the situation. In designing a sound PES, it is crucial to determine the...

This paper identifies key determinants of individual, school, and quality of education outcomes and examines related policies, strategies, and project intervention to recommend reforms or possible reorientation. Two sets of data were used: (i) data on school resources and outputs from the...

Wage inequality in Indonesia has decreased over the last two decades. This is in contrast to many developed and developing countries, which have largely seen an increase in wage inequality over this time period. This paper investigates the extent to which minimum wage laws may have contributed...

This paper examines the impact of remittances on economy and household welfare in Pakistan by using a general equilibrium framework and microeconometric analysis. The first approach is to highlight the macroeconomic and sectoral effects of a reduction in remittances, while the second is to show...

We examine the role of trade liberalization in accounting for increasing wage inequality in the Philippines from 1994 to 2000 - a period over which trade protection declined and inequality increased dramatically. Using the approach of Ferreira, Leite, and Wai-Poi (2007), we find that...

Trade in food and other agricultural products is increasingly important across East and Southeast Asia, where high-income Asian economies have driven significant agricultural expansion, and the momentous growth of the People's Republic of China (PRC) promises more stimulus to agrofood activity...