Timely and equitable access to vaccines and other health technologies is vital in effectively responding to pandemics and treating other communicable diseases. This paper shows how countries might overcome real or purported intellectual property (IP) barriers to regional COVID-19 vaccine...

Export diversification, or the breadth of exports of an economy, is increasingly seen as a means of accelerating economic growth, mitigating instability due to price, demand, and exchange rate fluctuations, and stabilizing earnings from exports in the long run. As economies integrate into global...

Real exchange rate (RER) misalignment, which is the deviation between the actual real exchange rate from its equilibrium, occurs frequently among developing economies. Studies have shown that RER misalignment may have negative economic implications, such as a reduction in economic growth,...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the correlation between firm size, growth and profitability along with other firm-specific variables (like leverage, competition and asset tangibility), macroeconomic variable (like GDP growth-business cycle) and stock market development variable...

Amidst a fragile recovery, three clouds are gathering over the economic horizon: US inflation could provoke financial tightening, China's structural slowdown and zero-COVID-19 policy could dampen regional exports, and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine could disrupt food and fuel supplies,...

This paper examines the countercyclicality of remittance inflows to the countries in Asia and the Pacific. It also aims to identify major determinants of remittances using gravity models of bilateral remittances. We find that bilateral remittance inflows are countercyclical against the business...

Trade misinvoicing occurs when price, quantity or description of internationally traded goods is purposefully misrepresented for pecuniary gain. It is one type of illicit financial flows (IFFs), and combating IFFs has been explicitly included in the Sustainable Development Goals. Most literature...

This paper investigates the nature of volatility spillovers between stock returns and hedge funds returns in twelve Asia Pacific countries in the 1997-2018 period. The sample period encompasses sub periods, 1997 Asia financial crisis, 2008 Global financial crisis and 2010 Eurozone crisis; these...

Purpose: This paper aims to make a modest attempt to classify the Asia-Pacific countries in terms of the access to information and communication technology (ICT) to unearth the prevalence of digital divide (if any) in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition to that, this paper also examines the...

Globally, healthcare is a key sector for the overall well-being of a country and its population. By 2030, at least 60 percent of the global population will be living in Asia, and one in four will be over 60 years of age. As the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of the sector, it also...

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted both the strengths and weaknesses of national, regional, and global vaccine research and development (R&D) systems. Translating public and private R&D efforts into effective vaccines in a timely manner requires not only sufficient financial and scientific...

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the crucial role of vaccines in public health management and economic recovery. Its worldwide impact has raised national security concerns and implications on health policies, particularly on Asia Pacific countries' readiness to cope...

The COVID-19 pandemic re-emphasized the role of vaccines in prevention and control of outbreaks and infectious diseases, but not all countries are able to produce them. Limited domestic capacities combined with other bottlenecks have often resulted in vaccine stockouts in many countries. In this...

The global health crisis that came to be known as the COVID-19 pandemic and started to sweep across the world in early 2020 revealed many vulnerabilities in the economic, social, and political fabric underpinning what much of the world had come to accept as normal. In ways that we are still...

Vaccines against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have provided hope for containing the pandemic, but there are challenging obstacles to international transport and logistics of the new vaccines and vaccine inputs needed for manufacturing. This study identifies key barriers in the Asia-Pacific...