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...

The paper uses the emerging Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community as a motivation to explore the issue of capital flow management in an economic community. Although there is an increasingly shared view that capital flow management measures should be part of the...

Singapore is the most industrialized and urbanized country in Southeast Asia and is totally dependent on oil and natural gas imports to satisfy its energy needs. Its national energy policy framework seeks to find a balance between maintaining Singapore’s competitiveness, improving energy...

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 paper reviews the experience of regional economic cooperation in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Conceived as a regional security alliance, the GCC has evolved to become a common market in the making. All six GCC countries participate in the common market project, and additional...

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...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement seems to have reached a crossroads: it could either be a building block toward achieving economic integration in Asia and the Pacific, or trigger the formation of two large trade blocs which will work independently of one another. When the Government...

Structural change has a far-reaching impact on inequality. Extensive structural change is both a cause and consequence of the exceptionally rapid economic growth, which enabled developing Asia to raise living standards and reduce poverty at a historically unprecedented rate. The region has...

Trade integration and free trade agreement (FTA)-led cooperation between Asia and Latin America has increased since the early 2000s. Using new criteria, this paper examines whether Asia-Latin America FTAs have facilitated market-led integration by liberalizing trade and behind the border...