In this paper, we review the overall micro, small, and medium-sized enterprise landscape in Asia, including the challenges and constraints faced by enterprises in physical (offline) and online markets. We then explore the unique circumstances and externalities that arise due to the special...

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic profoundly impacted people's lives, social activities, and businesses. It particularly affected micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which account for the vast majority of firms and most of the labor force. Compared to larger firms,...

Using household panel data from Korea for 1995-98, this paper shows that private transfers of Korean households were altruistically motivated. Although the altruistic motive of households seemed to be reinforced during the financial crisis, the amount of private transfers was still not...

In a canonical model of collective action, individual contribution to collective action is negatively correlated with group size. Yet, empirical evidence on the group size effect has been mixed, partly due to heterogeneities in group activities. In this paper, we first construct a simple model...

Existing studies identify two major underlying mechanisms behind East and Southeast Asia’s miraculous economic performance in the past 5 decades: accumulation and technological catching-up. This study investigates empirically the relative importance of these two mechanisms in Asian development...

We summarize the unprecedented adverse health and economic impacts as well as policy responses in the Asia and Pacific region and the rest of the world generated by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020. By the end of 2020, over 80 million people had been infected, with developing...