Many Asian countries are undergoing transition from centrally planned to market-oriented economies. The People's Republic of China (PRC) and Viet Nam have been going through this transition since the 1980s, while Mongolia and the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia,...

Theory tells us that weak rule of law and institutions deter cross-border integration, deter investment relative to trade, and inhibit trade finance. Drawing on a survey of more than 300 Chinese enterprises that are doing or have done business in North Korea, we consider how informal...

In the 1990s, 600,000 to 1 million North Koreans, or about 3-5 percent of the pre-crisis population perished in one of the worst famines of the 20th century. North Korea is once again poised on the brink of famine. Although the renewed provision of aid is likely to avert a disaster on the scale...

This paper analyses the impact of recent financial crises in Europe on the Asian economies. What is often abbreviated to GFC included three distinct crises: the 2007–2008 North Atlantic financial crisis, a 2008–2009 global economic crisis and public finance crises which became increasingly...

This paper analyses resource management experiences of seven resource-rich Asian transition economies. The countries’ experiences illustrate that a series of hurdles need to be surmounted to benefit from resource abundance, and that neither the similar initial institutions nor those created in...

Regionalization of trade in East Asia increased in the 1990s, and has been accompanied by a growing number of trade agreements. The wave of trade agreements is in part a response to the need to facilitate trade in order to make regional value chains more profitable. This paper draws on a rich...