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...

Annual income data may provide a misleading indicator of enduring income inequality in societies where there is considerable year-to-year income mobility. Using two rounds of data on households, the paper measures income mobility in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) between the early 1990s...

Wage inequality in Indonesia has decreased over the last two decades. This is in contrast to many developed and developing countries, which have largely seen an increase in wage inequality over this time period. This paper investigates the extent to which minimum wage laws may have contributed...

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the role of financial sector development, with a view to deepening understanding of the rationale of development assistance to the financial sector of developing countries. The review leads to the following broad conclusions: (i)...

This paper seeks to analyze the factors affecting the growth of enterprises in the Philippines, as measured from the expansion of employment. The paper contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it attempts to provide a comprehensive background of the various policies and legislations...

We examine the effects of a mandated credit program to small and medium enterprises in the Philippines (Magna Carta Law) using a panel dataset compiled from official data published by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. The final sample of 109 financial institutions represented over 90% of total...

The paper discusses key challenges faced throughout the Asia and the Pacific region as a number of its developing economies graduate from low-income status to middle-income status at the same time as the region remains home to the majority of the world's poor people and a number of fragile...

In light of the United Nations' (UN) latest urbanization projections, particularly with respect to India and the People's Republic of China, a good understanding is needed of what drives aggregate urbanization trends. Yet, previous literature has largely neglected the issue in favor of studying...