Although economic linkages between South Asia and Southeast Asia have been strengthened over the past decade, integration between these two regions remains limited. Can new approaches to regional integration help revitalize trade and economic links between South Asia and Southeast Asia This...

"This paper examines the impact of reducing corruption and improving transparency to lower trade costs in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation region. The authors find, based on a computable general equilibrium model, significant potential trade and welfare gains for Asia Pacific Economic...

"In many developing countries, achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 will require significant increases in expenditures on social services and in foreign assistance. It will also require careful planning of the sector allocation and sequencing of public spending. Especially...

The effects of the global economic slowdown on peoples' employment and earnings are at the core of its social impacts, manifested largely through increased job uncertainties and reduced worker earnings in crisis-affected sectors, as opposed to widespread open unemployment. The global economic...

As developing economies continue to mature and enter the next phase of reforms, labor market issues and key policy instruments such as the minimum wage increasingly come to the forefront. Increased globalization and wider competition compel countries to make labor markets more flexible so as not...

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a community of more than 600 million people living in ten countries in one of the most dynamic regions of the world. Consistent with this, ASEAN's share of world GDP and world trade has sharply increased over the past decades. In 2003,...

This report is part of a project being jointly conducted by the World Bank, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat, and United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). It aims to...

This report is part of a project being jointly conducted by the World Bank, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat, and United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). It aims to...

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on the ASEAN region, which has recorded over 27 million cases of the virus. Despite rapid development of a range of COVID-19 vaccines using innovative technologies, access to these vaccines has been a challenge, with manufacturing mostly...

COVID-19 has had a devastating effect on the ASEAN region, which has recorded over 27 million cases of the virus. Access to COVID-19 vaccination has significantly reduced the spread of the disease and limited the number of severe COVID-19 cases, but it has also impacted routine immunization...