East and Southeast Asia face major demographic changes over the next few decades as many countries' labor forces will start to decline, while others will experience higher labor force growth as populations and participation rates increase. A well-managed labor migration strategy presents itself...

Over the past decades, East Asia and Pacific's productivity has been gradually catching up with the frontier (the United States), with China leading the pack. Productivity growth has been driven by sustained within-sector productivity growth. Reallocation of labor to sectors with higher...

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of how economies in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region have been integrating financially with the rest of the world since the 1990s, using bilateral data on portfolio investments, syndicated bank loans, mergers and acquisitions (M&As), and...

Reform programs sometimes falter because they are politically infeasible. Policy change inevitably creates winners and losers, so those with vested interests strike bargains to determine how far and how quickly reform should advance. Understanding these micro political dynamics of reform can...

Groundwater is a vital yet threatened resource in much of South Asia. This paper develops a model of groundwater transactions under payoff uncertainty arising from unpredictable fluctuations in groundwater availability during the agricultural dry season. The model highlights the trade-off...

This paper looks at how individual preferences for the allocation of government spending change along the life cycle. Using the Life in Transition Survey II for 34 countries in Europe and Central Asia, the study finds that older individuals are less likely to support a rise in government outlays...

Despite significant improvements in per capita expenditures and a marked decline in poverty over the 2000s, a large fraction of Eastern Europe and Central Asia's population reports their economic situation in the late 2000s to be worse than in 1989. This paper uses data from the Life in...

This paper uses data from the Integrated Values Survey, the Life in Transition Survey, and the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey to analyze the relation between age and subjective well-being in the Europe and Central Asia region. Although the results generally confirm the findings of...

Substantial upward economic mobility in the majority of countries in Europe and Central Asia in the 2000s translated into achievements in reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. Although factors associated with upward mobility vary significantly by country, education and jobs...

This paper examines support for reducing inequality and for income redistribution to specific groups in Europe and Central Asia. The paper uses the Life in Transition Survey to analyze cross-country differences in redistributive preferences and the determinants of individual-level differences in...