Lean strategy, aimed at optimizing resources, minimizing energy usage, and achieving zero waste in the production process, has been increasingly embraced to reduce systemwide costs in manufacturing. However, practitioners in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often lack the necessary...

This paper assesses how pro-poor and inclusive Asia’s recent growth has been, and what factors have been driving these outcomes. It finds that while poverty has fallen across the region over the last two decades, inequality has increased, dampening the impact of growth on poverty reduction. As...

The 2007-09 Great Recession has led to an unprecedented increase in public debt in many countries, triggering substantial fiscal adjustments. What are the distributional consequences of fiscal austerity measures? This is an important policy question. This paper analyzes the effects of fiscal...