Adequate fiscal flexibility is a prerequisite for meeting the post-2015 development challenges. This paper proposes a composite fiscal flexibility index. Based on several important fiscal parameters, the index will identify countries in the Asia and Pacific region that are well-poised to meet...

The development of the service sector in the People’s Republic of China has not kept pace with the country’s overall economic development. The share of employment in services is still lagging behind that of output and is also below the international norm. Moving from traditional services to...

Natural disasters are on the rise worldwide. There are more and more intense natural disasters — which are defined to cause at least 100 deaths or to affect the basic survival needs of at least 1,000 people — resulting from floods and storms as well as droughts and heat waves. The Asia and...

The service sector is the largest and fastest growing sector in India and has the highest labor productivity, but employment has not kept pace with the share of the sector in gross domestic product and has not produced the number or quality of jobs needed. There is no policy leading to inclusive...

This paper aims to quantify the political risk effect and its different economic implications in normal and crisis situations through the proxy analysis of election and the sovereign bond spreads. Our study leads to three main findings. First, in normal economic situations, elections and...

Private investment in Malaysia has been sluggish since the Asian financial crisis. One explanation is that the growing presence of government-linked corporations (GLCs) has been crowding out private investment. For the first time, we provide empirical evidence on the relationship between GLC...

The strong and volatile rebound of capital inflows, mostly portfolio investments, into emerging economies in the recovery process of the 2008 global financial crisis has brought the issue of capital controls to the forefront once again. The presence of global imbalances and unconventional...

This paper estimates the gender-specific effects of birthweight on a variety of schooling and labor market outcomes. A unique feature of the study is to use micro evidence on the relationship between birthweight - an early measure of nutritional advantage - and schooling outcomes to make...

Motivated by the literature on the finance – growth nexus, this paper explores the mechanisms through which finance affects corporate investments and capital accumulation. We separate the effects of financial conditions from those of financial development. Based on a sample of firms from five...

This paper analyzes the role of complexity in production on the level of output and on its rate of growth. We develop an endogenous growth model with human capital accumulation, where increased complexity could exert either a positive or a negative effect on the level of output but always a...