The global economic crisis has revealed that growth in East Asia is highly vulnerable to slowdown in exports to major advanced economies. This paper shows that in precrisis years, at least one third of growth in the People's Republic of China was due to exports, and this proportion was even...

This paper compares achievements and inequities in standards of living across countries. Achievement is measured by an index, which is constructed to reflect greater achievement for an increase in the standard of living of a country that is already at a high level compared to that of another...

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the issues, policies, and political economy of infrastructure investment, and a review of empirical literature of the relationship between growth and infrastructure. Empirical estimations using the growth accounting framework for a panel of 123...

A key legacy of the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998 is a sustained drop-off in the investment rates of East Asian countries that were hardest hit by the crisis. We first review the stylized facts of investment in those countries, and then explore and evaluate the various possible...

Remittances to Asia plunged during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, but the drop was temporary as the flows were increasing once again after just 1 year. The current crisis, however, is fundamentally different in that even the countries that send remittances have been adversely affected. The...

The central objective of this paper is to empirically evaluate the degree of linkages among East Asian equity and bond markets. The primary contribution of our paper to the empirical literature is that we use a financial gravity model grounded in economic theory. Using data from the...

This paper presents new micro-level data consisting of individual greenfield investment projects and mergers and acquisitions as a source for detailed analysis of service sector cross-border investment flows among the Asian Development Bank (ADB) regional members. The new transactional foreign...

Poverty reduction in the Asia and the Pacific region in 2005–2008 had been quite significant. Despite the global crisis, an estimated 150 million people exited extreme poverty by 2008 - from 903.4 million in 2005 to 753.5 million, bringing the percentage of people living under the $1.25 per...

This study examines the differences in the effectiveness of de jure capital restrictions across economies in different regions (Asia versus non-Asia) and with varying income levels. It uses a panel of 45 economies over the period 1995– 2007. The results show that differences in regional and...

This paper explores disparities in Millennium Development Goals among countries in the Asia and Pacific region, with a special emphasis on health Millennium Development Goals. It provides estimates on the extent of these disparities and depicts their trends. More importantly, sources or causes...