This paper reports an empirical investigation into the welfare impacts of introduction of private sector participation into the Philippine electricity generation sector, through liberalization of the market for independent power producers (IPPs) during the power crisis of 1990-1993. This study...

The ongoing political decentralization in Asia, with central governments devolving to local governments the responsibilities of delivering key development projects and public services, calls for sound local government finance. Local government finance in the region exhibits several problems:...

Viet Nam's dramatic transition and growth in the 1990s have been attributed to a series of reforms, known as doi moi, which began in the late 1980s. Economic growth at nearly 8 percent yearly appeared broad-based, thus benefiting the poor and reducing poverty from 61 percent in 1993 to 37...

This paper provides a critical review of the burgeoning literature on social capital, highlighting a number of serious conceptual and empirical problems associated with this literature. First, the concept of social capital remains largely elusive, with many different ideas attached to it. This...

The motivation of this research paper is to shed light upon the political economy factors that determine the quality of governance for poverty alleviation policies. This issue is a crucial one because although remarkable strides have been made in some parts of the world, more than 2.8 billion...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) flows have increased dramatically in recent decades. As developing countries, particularly in Asia, remove restrictions and implement policies to attract FDI inflows, trade and investment have become increasingly intertwined. As such, there have been growing calls...

This paper uses a macroeconomic approach to develop a long-run electricity demand model to analyze the main factors affecting electricity demand in the Peopleís Republic of China (PRC). As expected, the relationship among variables is more stable and significant after the PRCís economic...

In 2000, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) launched a Regional Technical Assistance (RETA 5860) entitled Institutional Strengthening and Collection of Environment Statistics in Selected Developing Member Countries (DMCs), covering five Central Asian countries namely Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic,...

In postcrisis Asia, the development of domestic bond markets is increasingly seen as one of the key requirements to strengthen the financial sectors of East Asian countries and to reduce their vulnerabilities to future financial crises. There is a great diversity in terms of the level of bond...