Businesses are crucial members of society, in fact, many are also significant social institutions. The decisions they make and the actions they take reverberate throughout society. Society depends on businesses in their provision of jobs, investment, goods and services produced, and development...

CSR in Asia has moved from ideology to reality and become an increasingly important aspect for how businesses conduct themselves in Asia today. However, while many businesses have awakened to this demand, they are much less clear as to how to best proceed with CSR. In fact, many common CSR...

This paper reports on the geographic extension of the Human Development Index from 177 (a several-year plateau in the United Nations Development Programme's HDI) to over 230 economies, including all members and associate members of ESCAP. This increase in geographic coverage makes the HDI more...

Since 1990, the Human Development Index has revolutionized discussions about human development. However, it suffers from two deficiencies, which can now be mitigated: geographic incompleteness and insufficiently “on-target” representation of economy, knowledge, and “a long and healthy...

Since countries have continued to liberalize trade both unilaterally and as part of the implementation of preferential trade agreements during the past decade, import tariff costs now often account for a very small share of the overall trade costs faced by traders in Asia and the Pacific –...

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are often advocated as an effective mechanism for delivering water and sanitation services. At the same time it is argued that in developing countries the private sector lacks the incentives to extend services to the poor and that PPPs may only be able to...

This chapter provides a picture of post-crisis trade and investment interventions in the Asia-Pacific region. It focuses not only on restrictions on merchandise trading, but also on new obstacles to services trade and movements of people, including service providers.

List of tables on trade performance indicators