Focusing on Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Chinese firms in the manufacturing sector, this paper examines productivity catch-up at the firm level using the distance from the technology frontier as a direct measure of the potential for catch-up. We also examine the role of absorptive capacity...

In a country such as China, which maintains strict controls on foreign exchange and frequently intervenes in the currency market, it is not surprising that the local currency is persistently undervalued in nominal terms. Normally, one would expect such a policy of deliberate currency...

This paper uses micro data and published compilations of micro data to estimate shares of multinational corporations (MNCs) in Southeast Asian manufacturing. It first shows that MNC shares tended to be largest in Singapore, intermediate in Malaysia and (recently) in Vietnam, and lowest in...

The literature referring to the credit slowdown has been plagued by the identification problem of whether a decline in a bank's credit is derived from the demand or the supply side. This paper proposes an original approach in directly estimating the credit demand and the credit supply from...

This study analyzes the cause of the slowdown in Japan's TFP growth during the 1990s. Many preceding studies, examining the issue at the macro- or industry-level, have found that the slowdown was primarily due to the stagnation in TFP growth in the manufacturing sector. Using establishment level...

Using techniques of spatial econometrics, this paper investigates ƒÐ-convergence of provincial real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in China. The empirical evidence concludes that spatial dependence across regions is strong enough to distort the traditional measure of ƒÐ-convergence....

Coupled with advances in enterprise reform and changes in the wage structure, earnings inequality in urban China has been increasing, and this has contributed significantly to rising income inequality. Using urban household survey data from the 1988, 1995 and 2002 waves of the China Household...

This paper presents the impact of income inequality on the subjective wellbeing of three different social groups in urban China. We classify urban social groups according to their hukou status: rural migrants, gbornh urban residents, and gacquiredh urban residents who had changed their hukou...

For the four years since 2006, Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic, has led the world in the receipt of foreign remittance as a proportion of GDP. Needless to say, key reasons for this are the low income levels in Tajikistan and the country's special relationship with Russia, which is enjoying...