The United Nations recognizes that productivity capacity building is the key for self-sustained growth and graduation of LDCs in Asia and the Pacific. To achieve this objective, substantial financing must be mobilized to invest in infrastructure, social development and climate change challenges....

This paper examines the impact of workers’ remittances on growth and poverty reduction in developing Asia-Pacific countries using panel data over the period 1993-2003. The results suggests that, while remittances do have a significant impact on poverty reduction through increasing income,...

The ongoing euro zone debt crisis creates an undesirable scenario for the global economy as well as for the Asia-Pacific region given that the region has close economic linkages. The paper aims to provide quantitative estimates of the potential impact of the euro zone debt crisis on merchandise...

High food prices have put increasing inflationary pressures across the Asia-Pacific region and threatened food security. Bad weather in important food-producing countries and speculation in commodity markets have affected global food supplies and added volatility to booming commodity markets...

This paper analyses the effect of public and private health expenditures on the achievement of health-related MDGs. It finds that three quarters of the variation of health-related MDG indicators can be explained by public and private health expenditure per capita when controlling for levels of...

The paper provides quantitative estimates of the productive capacities of the countries in the Asia- Pacific region and their evolution in the past 25 years. It updates the results for 2009 presented in the ESCAP’s Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2011 and details the...

This paper estimates the impact of the high food prices of 2010 on income poverty and the achievement of MDG 1 in Asia and the Pacific. It also estimates the impacts of high price during 2011 under various scenarios for the prices of food and oil. We find that although the high food prices of...

This paper reports on the geographic extension of the Human Development Index from 177 (a several-year plateau in the United Nations Development Programme's HDI) to over 230 economies, including all members and associate members of ESCAP. This increase in geographic coverage makes the HDI more...

The similarities yet differences across South Asian countries, and their differential response to recent food and oil price shocks, gives a useful opportunity to better understand the structure of inflation in these economies. Analysis of the internal and external balance and evidence on demand...

We review the literature on the relationship between agricultural trade policy reform and poverty, and the results of recent detailed simulation studies applied to economies in the ESCAP region. We then use the GTAP model to evaluate the possible impacts of the most recently proposed modality...