The Quarterly Economic Update (QEU) provides a comprehensive and updated analysis of recent economic performance in Sri Lanka. The QEU for April 2012 highlights balancing between inflation and economic growth, given that external demand is slowing down, and that year-on-year inflation will be...

This study analyzes the potential fiscal, health, and poverty impacts of increasing cigarette taxes in five countries —the People’s Republic of China, India, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam. For each of these countries, increasing taxes on cigarettes would result in substantially...

Viet Nam has experienced spectacular economic growth over the past decade, in part the result of massive foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Although much has been written on the impacts of FDI in developing countries, previous studies have generally ignored macroeconomic consequences in...

The paper argues that East Asian regionalism is fragile because (i) each nation's industrial competitiveness depends on the smooth functioning of "Factory Asia" - in particular for intraregional trade; (ii) the unilateral tariff-cutting that created Factory Asia is not subject to WTO discipline...