Survey data from urban China in 2002 show levels of life satisfaction to be low, but not exceptionally so, by international comparison. Many of the determinants of life satisfaction in urban China appear comparable to those for people in other countries. These include, inter alia, unemployment,...

This paper estimates trends in absolute poverty in urban China from 1988 to 2002 using the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) surveys. Poverty incidence curves are plotted, showing that poverty has fallen markedly during the period regardless of the exact location of the poverty line....

Economic theory has identified a number of channels through which openness to international financial flows could raise productivity growth. However, while there is a vast empirical literature analyzing the impact of financial openness on output growth, far less attention has been paid to its...

Economic theory has identified a number of channels through which openness to international financial flows could raise productivity growth. However, while there is a vast empirical literature analyzing the impact of financial openness on output growth, far less attention has been paid to its...

Developing Asia has undergone a dramatic shift over the past 5 decades from a region of mainly low-income economies toward one that is largely middle income. Compared with world aggregate data, developing Asia now has a much greater proportion of middle-income economies. The region faces the...

We examine the determinants of financial development in Asia and the Pacific from 1995 to 2011. To do so, we apply the dynamic generalized method of moments to a panel data set of 26 economies in the region. We find that better governance and institutional quality foster financial development in...

The underdeveloped service sector in Asia has the potential to become a new engine of economic growth for developing Asia, which has traditionally relied on export-oriented manufacturing to power its growth. The central objective of this paper is to empirically analyze the prospects for the...