Increased foreign direct investment (FDI) flows have stimulated intensive debate and research on the impact of FDI on host economies. This paper surveys the substantial literature exploring FDI and spillover effects, summarizes the main findings from previous research, and identifies omissions...

Small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) are of great socioeconomic significance although their long-term growth and competitiveness have been compromised by the chronic and often acute constraints on their access to formal-sector finance, among other systemic and institutional problems in...

The paper proposes a poverty reduction index demonstrating that the selection of growth policies should be to maximize the sum of income and inequality effects. The empirical results indicate that economic growth in the People's Republic of China (PRC) between 1985 and 2001 was effective in...

While decentralization of schooling in Asian developing countries has largely been driven by fiscal constraints, it has also been motivated by concerns about the effectiveness of a centralized system in delivering schooling services. The statistics are revealing about some of these concerns:...

Using an early warning system model, this paper provides empirical evidence on the causes of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, with a view to shedding light on policy lessons. The model shows that there were warning signals of heightened economic and financial vulnerabilities in each of the five...

Despite the current fashion for issues such as institutional transparency or corruption, the modern policy development literature does too little to integrate the core ideas of modern political economy with standard economic theory. Little is done to distinguish the advice given to developing...

This paper applies two distinct approaches—growth regressions and growth accounting—to analyze the link between infrastructure, growth, and productivity in developing Asian countries. The main conclusion is that a number of countries in developing Asia have significantly improved their basic...

A recent line of research demonstrates that cognitive skills—intelligence quotient scores, math skills, and the like—have only a modest influence on individual wages, but are strongly correlated with national outcomes. Is this largely due to human capital spillovers? This paper argues that...

Broad consensus exists that the ability of political actors to make credible commitments is key to development. An important and little-explored determinant of the credibility of political commitments is the existence of organizations that facilitate citizen collective action to sanction...

Over the last 3 decades, the product, labor, and capital markets of the People’s Republic of China have become gradually more integrated within its borders, though integration has been significantly slower for capital markets. There remains a significant urban–rural divide, and cities in the...