This report summarizes key results from a 2012 survey of businesses in Papua New Guinea. It compares the results with the 2002 and 2007 surveys and shows that, while the business environment has improved since 2002, doing business in Papua New Guinea remains extremely challenging. Continued...

This economic report on Tonga is the result of a joint project of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Australian Agency for International Development. It is part of ADB’s Pacific Islands Economic Report series, which aims to assist governments in formulating policy by analyzing a...

The Monitor provides an update of developments in Pacific economies and explores topical policy issues.

Mexico has embarked on a bold package of structural reforms that will help it to break away from three decades of slow growth and low productivity. Major structural measures have been legislated to improve competition, education, energy, the financial sector, labour, infrastructure and the tax...

The Quarterly Economic Update (QEU) provides a comprehensive and updated analysis of the recent economic performance of Sri Lanka. The QEU for July 2012 highlights the expected economic slowdown in 2012. With inflation trending up, monetary tightening is expected to continue for a longer period....

This report investigates urbanization trends across the 14 Pacific developing member countries of the Asian Development Bank. It examines the history of Pacific urbanization, current state of infrastructure and service provision within urban areas, and systems of urban governance. It presents...

Economic policies shape how much people earn but also how stable their income and jobs are. The level of earnings and the degree of economic stability both matter for well-being. Micro-level data indicate that, across OECD countries, economic instability is much greater at the level of...

The economics profession seems to increasingly endorse the existence of a strongly negative nonlinear effect of public debt on economic growth. Reinhart and Rogoff (2010) were the first to point out that a public debt-to-GDP ratio higher than 90% of GDP is associated with considerably lower...

This report focuses on the effects of climate change impacts on economic growth. Simulations with the OECD’s dynamic global general equilibrium model ENV-Linkages assess the consequences of a selected number of climate change impacts in the various world regions at the macroeconomic and...

Using panel data for OECD countries, this study investigates the extent to which changes in government spending on education, health and other areas influence long-term growth. The results suggest that, if total government spending is kept unchanged, increasing expenditure on health, education...