The central question addressed by this study is whether countries with above-average governance grew faster than countries with below-average governance. Using the World Bank's worldwide governance indicators to measure governance performance, it examines whether a country with governance...

The provision of infrastructure and related services in developing Asia via public–private partnership (PPP) increased rapidly during the late 1990s. Theoretical arguments support the potential economic benefits of PPPs, but empirical evidence is thin. This paper develops a framework...

Developing Asia's infrastructure gap results from both inadequate public resources and a lack of effective channel to mobilize private resources toward desired outcomes. The public–private partnership (PPP) mechanism has evolved to fill the infrastructure gap. However, PPP projects are often...

Why do some economies grow faster than others? Do economies in the middle-income range face especially difficult challenges producing consistent growth? Using a transition matrix analysis on decade-level growth rates, we find that the data clearly reject the idea that middle income economies...

This paper looks at the role of governance and institutions in supporting growth and broadening inclusiveness with special reference to developing Asia. While the intrinsic value of good governance and institutions as ends of development in their own right is now universally accepted and...

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)...

Over the past 2 decades, income inequality has moderated in three middle-income countries in Southeast Asia—the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam—with multiple factors at play. In each country, wage, nonfarm business income, and overseas remittance concentrations declined as less well-off...

We estimate the People's Republic of China's (PRC's) potential growth rate in 2012 at 8.7% and at 9.2% for the average of 2008-2012, about the same as the average actual growth rate for this period. This rate is the natural growth rate, that is, the rate consistent with a constant unemployment...

This paper examines underlying factors that could explain the decline in income inequality in the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2008 and inquires whether the decline indicates that the PRC's income inequality has peaked following the Kuznets hypothesis. The paper first identifies four...