This paper has two main objectives. First, it assesses and measures the gaps in the stock of human capital across the world. It presents how effectively different regions are improving their stock of human capital, and how long it will take for developing countries to catch up with the current...

Using a growth accounting framework, we find that developing Asia grew rapidly over the past 3 decades mainly due to robust growth in capital accumulation. The contributions of education and total factor productivity in the region's past economic growth remain relatively limited. Our baseline...

Developing Asia has weathered the global economic crisis well and is experiencing a rapid, robust V-shaped recovery. According to conventional wisdom, the fiscal stimulus packages put in place by the region's governments played a key role in the region's superior postcrisis performance. The...

This paper describes the size of the middle class in developing Asia across countries and over time. Based on an absolute measure of the middle class of $2-$20 (2005 purchasing power parity United States dollars), it finds that between 1990 and 2008, the size of the middle class in developing...

The construction of a New Socialist Countryside (NSC) is among the highlights in the People's Republic of China's (PRC) 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010). The NSC aims to accelerate the development and modernization of the agricultural and rural economy in order to close the widening rural-urban...

We use establishment-level data from Indian manufacturing to describe the distribution of firm size in terms of employment, and discuss implications for public policy. A unique feature of our analysis is the use of nationally representative establishment-level data from both the registered...

We apply a stochastic frontier production model to data from 53 countries during 1991-2003 to estimate total factor productivity growth, and decompose it into technical efficiency change and technical progress. Our empirical results indicate that world productivity growth was led by fast-growing...

As the global crisis hit developing Asia, several countries instituted fiscal stimulus measures to create domestic demand. With the region returning to normal times, in this paper we draw lessons using historical data from 10 developing Asian countries to examine if countercyclical fiscal policy...

Policies and programs designed to protect workers may, paradoxically, have a negative impact on labor as a whole by increasing unemployment. A key question is which policies have this effect. Using a 3-year panel of 90 countries, the study finds that the unemployment rate is affected by the...

Emerging Asian economies have made strong progress in improving educational capital in the past 40 years. High educational attainment, especially at the secondary level, has significantly improved emerging Asia's educational achievement. Regressions show that better parental education and...