This study examines the impact of bond markets on both bank profit and cost efficiency. By employing the stochastic frontier approach and utilizing a large micro dataset for 926 banks covering 27 economies from the Asia and Pacific region over the period from 2004 to 2017, we find that both the...

Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries face severe financing difficulties, especially when trying to expand internationally. “Information friction” is a significant cause of this financing gap. Recent financial technologies (fintech) can improve supply chain...

Despite solid evidence regarding the large benefits of reducing disaster risk, it has remained difficult to motivate sustained investment into disaster risk reduction (DRR). Recently, international policy debate has started to emphasize the need for focusing DRR investment toward actions that...

This paper examines the effect of capital subsidies after great disasters on the recovery of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using propensity score matching estimations. The estimates show that capital subsidies were effective for the recovery of the performance of SMEs in the retail...

This paper shows that because growth models in the tradition of Solow's and Romer's are framed in terms of production functions, they are equally subject to a criticism developed by, among others, Phelps Brown (1957), Simon (1979a), and Samuelson (1979). These authors argued that production...

Disaster risk and subsequent loss and damage in Asia are increasing at an alarming rate, threatening socioeconomic gains. Arresting this rapid increase in exposure requires risk-informed development and urban planning—a challenging proposition complicated by multiple economic and political...

This study provides a toolkit to nowcast, or produce early estimates of, gross domestic product (GDP) growth in India. We use a dynamic factor model (DFM) to nowcast GDP growth in India on a quarterly basis from January 2000 to December 2018. The DFM methodology offers a powerful and tractable...

International migration is an essential element of economic integration. Yet, the intraregional movement of people and labor in Asia and the Pacific has stagnated in recent years even as the flow of goods, services, and investment have steadily risen. This paper examines key factors driving the...

In recent years, insurance against natural disasters has gained recognition as an important tool for climate risk management that could, if carefully implemented, help increase the resilience of those insured. In response, insurance solutions are increasingly tested and applied in many countries...

In this paper, we test the effect of weather shocks and floods on urban social disorder for a panel of large cities in developing countries. We focus on a particular mechanism, namely the displacement of population into (large) cities. We test this hypothesis using a novel dataset on...