The maturing of the manufacturing sector in many Asian countries, combined with the relative backwardness of its services sector, has made services sector development a top priority for developing Asia. Our central objective is to broadly survey and analyze the current landscape of the region's...

This working paper draws on historical and contemporary data on tariffs, non tariff barriers, and transportation costs (for the United States and its major trading partners) to estimate the role of policy liberalization in US merchandise trade growth over the period 1980 to 2006. Both partial...

This paper analyzes productivity growth trends in emerging-market economies vis-à-vis advanced economies, both in the recent global productivity slowdown and from a long-term perspective. While income has converged in most countries in the last three decades, total factor productivity has...

Developing Asia has exhibited rapid growth while saddled with relatively backward financial systems. One might conclude that the coexistence of sustained rapid growth and financial underdevelopment in developing Asia implies that an efficient financial sector is not indispensable for economic...

Developing Asia has exhibited rapid growth while saddled with relatively backward financial systems. One might conclude that the coexistence of sustained rapid growth and financial underdevelopment in developing Asia implies that an efficient financial sector is not indispensable for economic...

Latin American performance during the global financial crisis was unprecedented. Many developing and emerging countries successfully weathered the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Was it good luck? Was it good policies? In this paper we compare growth during the Asian and global...

Over the last three decades the global economy has expanded in a remarkable fashion. While nominal world GDP has increased four times, world bilateral trade flows have grown more than six-fold, and the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown by roughly 20 times since 1980. The sources...