The Philippines has long been regarded as the weak sister of Asia, but in the Asian financial crisis it performed relatively well. This is not simply a matter of not being able to fall out of the basement, either—in mid-1997 the Philippines economy was forecasted to grow at more than six...

Based on the meta-regression analysis this paper examines the long term relationship between growth and financial globalization in Asia. There is little evidence that financial globalization has had a positive impact on growth for the world as a whole. This pattern is broadly repeated for...

What do citizens of highly repressive regimes think about their governments? How do they respond to high levels of repression? This paper addresses these questions by examining the political attitudes of North Korean refugees. Unsurprisingly the evaluations of regime performance are negative,...

The American experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have motivated a re-examination of earlier experiences with post-conflict planning and reconstruction. This paper reviews the US experience in Korea following the Second World War and the Korean War; addresses the political economy of establishing...

The penal system has played a central role in the North Korean government’s response to the country’s profound economic and social changes. Two refugee surveys—one conducted in China, one in South Korea—document its changing role. The regime disproportionately targets politically suspect...

Despite North Korea’s turn away from economic reform and the constraints of the second nuclear crisis, the country has in fact become more economically open. But it has emphasized closer economic relations with China and other trading partners that show little interest in political...

The relationship between the US and Asia will be the single biggest determinant in the evolution of the global economic system. In the absence of adequate reform at the global level, the alternative could be further fragmentation into competing regional blocs. Asia holds the key, combining both...

This essay establishes four propositions. First, the diamond industry has been a positive force for development in southern Africa. Second, jewelry, among the most profitable segments of the industry, is a non-essential luxury, and accordingly, consumer concerns over conflict diamonds pose a...

The paper examines the impact of industrial protection, agricultural export taxes, and overvaluation of the exchange rate on the balance between the agricultural and nonagricultural sectors. Various agricultural terms-of-trade indices are constructed to measure the policy bias against...

This paper examines recent movements in domestic cereal prices in Ethiopia in light of world price movements and production trends, and then uses a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to assess the effects of various types of shocks on prices, incomes and food consumption, particularly...