It is generally understood that while the IT software and service sector in India recorded unprecedented growth rate in a sustained manner for more than a decade and established credibility in the international market, the hardware sector, both computer hardware and other electronics equipment...

This paper reviews the current empirical literature on competition and market structure of Philippine industries. It shows that weak competition is one of the fundamental factors that explain limited growth, productivity, and employment in the economy. Philippine experience has shown that...

We examine the eect of strategic sale the sale of banks to strategic foreign investors on banks performance. The Government of Indonesia implemented such a policy as a part of bank restructuring in the aftermath of the 1998 banking crisis. Using difference-in-difference models, we find that...

The paper reviews the innovations developed by some financial institutions to meet the challenges of microfinance and rural finance markets. Innovations could be new products and methodologies or refinements to existing practices that are created in response to market inefficiencies and changing...

This study assesses the state of micro-insurance in the country, identifies the players and their performance, and the challenges facing micro-insurance development. The term micro pertains to the capacity of a program to handle the small, sometime irregular cash flows of poor households, who...

Illness or injury, death of a family member, man-made calamities and natural disasters have a devastating effect on those poor households cash flow, liquidity and earning capacities and thus, on household welfare. Demand for micro-insurance products is growing in view of continuing risks to...

This paper reports on the impact evaluation study of the Rural Microenterprise Finance Project (RMFP) in the Philippines. RMFP aimed to support efforts of the Government of the Philippines to strengthen rural financial institutions by assisting organizations that employed the Grameen Bank...

This paper provides a conceptual basis for the price discovery potential for tradable market instruments and specifically the development of mortgage securitization in Asia and the potential dangers of such markets. Nonetheless we argue for the potential importance of securitization in Asia...

This paper clearly demonstrates that the axiomatic measurement approach developed in the human development literature can be usefully applied to the measurement of financial inclusion. A conceptual framework for aggregating data on financial services in different dimensions is developed. The...

This paper discusses the role of state intervention for prevention, containment, and resolution of financial crises based mainly on the Korean experience during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Crises in emerging market and developing economies tend to be more complicated than those faced by...