This paper aims at estimating the economic vulnerability of developing countries to disruptions in global value chains (GVCs) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It uses data on trade in value-added for a sample of 12 developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America to assess their...

The main objective of this paper is to give an overview of the most commonly used housing policies and to illustrate their economic impact. To facilitate the analysis, we first introduce a simple two-period housing demand model for owner-occupied houses and rental houses. We then add a standard...

Using a decomposition approach on data collected by the Asian Productivity Organization (APO) as well as World Input-Output data, we show that in most Asian economies the services sector makes the largest contribution to labor productivity. Furthermore, we find evidence of a major reallocation...

International trade is one of the key mechanisms for the diffusion of energy efficient technologies. Yet, little is known how regulations to fight climate change affect the international trade in goods needed to increase energy efficiency. This paper studies the case of the Energy Performance of...

Over the past two decades, Asia and the Pacific have not only experienced rapid growth, but in parallel saw a rapid increase in overweight people and obesity. The latest available data indicated that over 40.9% of adults in the region are overweight compared to 34.6% in 1993. It is well...