The ambitious development plans for the Lancang-Mekong River Basin (LMRB) could have serious environmental, social, cultural and even geopolitical ramifications that could in turn destabilise the Mekong Subregion (MS). On the premise that frameworks for regional cooperation offer a viable route...

Prior to the Asian financial crisis, most Asian exchange rates were de facto pegged to the US Dollar. In the crisis, many economies experienced a brief period of extreme flexibility. A `fear of floating' gave reduced flexibility when the crisis subsided, but flexibility after the crisis was...

This collection of 19 new essays written by civil society activists, trade unionists and other water practitioners, presents examples of ongoing struggles against water privatization and commercialization as well as inspiring examples of people-centered public water management from across Asia....

Capital account openness and exchange rate flexibility in 11 Asian countries are examined. Asia has made slow progress on de jure capital account openness, but has made much more progress on de facto capital account openness. While there is a slow pace of increase in exchange rate flexibility,...

The paper starts by recapitulating the basic arguments provided by economic theory to explain the existence of the patent system. The paper then concentrates on the three important ICT industries viz., telecommunication equipment, computer hardware and semiconductor industries. The issues...

The paper argues that if the Chinese economy had failed, mainstream economics would have described this as completely predictable, given the extent and nature of involvement of the Chinese state in the functioning of markets and the economy. The fact that China has succeeded therefore should...