This paper empirically investigates whether financial health shores up firm productivity. It presents productivity as another driving factor in translating financial development into real economic progress. The authors’ empirical framework employs Levinsohn and Petrin’s (2003)...

The global economic slowdown has again highlighted the vulnerability of export-led development models and economies to downturns in export markets. Economic deepening or “rebalancing” with an emphasis on service-sector development should be—and is becoming—one long-term response to the...

The relationship between large enterprises (LEs) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Japan has undergone major changes during the long-term recession since 1991. While SMEs still play the important role of supplying parts and components to LEs through subcontracting, many LEs have started...

This paper explores the impacts of more rapid growth in labor productivity in the service sector in Asia based on an empirical general equilibrium model. The model allows for input–output linkages and capital movements across industries and economies, and consumption and investment dynamics....

This paper examines the gains for South Asian economies from integrating with East Asia and India’s role in this process. Evidence of increased pan-Asian integration exists but the process is uneven. Bilateral trade has grown. As have bilateral foreign direct investment flows and free trade...

This paper reviews economic development and the regulatory environment of audiovisual services in the Republic of Korea (hereafter, Korea). The paper specifically examines motion pictures and broadcasting, and discusses what drives or hinders the sector’s trade potential, which depends on...

The paper investigates the situation of middle-income economies around the world. Since 1965, only 18 economies with a population of more than 3 million and not dependent on oil exports have made the transition to being high income. Many more have not been able to move beyond the middle-income...

This essay provides a game-theoretic, endogenous view of institutions, and then applies the idea to identify the sources of institutional trajectories of economic development in China, Japan, and Korea. It stylizes the Malthusian-phase of East Asian economies as peasant-based economies in which...

This paper looks at the recent trends of rising inequality in developing Asia, asks why inequality matters, examines the driving forces of rising inequality, and proposes policy options for tackling high and rising inequality. Technological change, globalization, and market-oriented reform have...

The paper discusses the financial landscape of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a region engaged in building an economic community (a “single market and production base”) by 2015. In particular, it reviews where ASEAN’s financial markets and institutions now stand and...