The paper seeks to analyse and discuss the impact of financial reform and related institutional change on the process of financial intermediation. In effect reforms stood the earlier quantity driven model on its head. The attempt was to de-segment markets and remove asset and liability...

This Policy Brief discusses the proposed amendments to Republic Act No. 7653 (RA 7653). The first part briefly presents the mandate of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). It then describes the financial sector’s challenges that necessitate the amendment of the said law. The salient...

There has been an increase in the demand for infrastructure services and opening up of the infrastructure sector for private investment. As a result, a large number of financial intermediaries and private sector participants would the financial market to raise long term funds in Bangladesh. It...

Pension assets have seen rapid growth world-wide over the past decades, although they suffered large losses during the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. Such growth is notably due to both structural and parametric pension reforms since the 1980s. In the Asian region too, the pension...

Government corruption is more prevalent in poor countries than in rich countries. This paper uses cross-industry heterogeneity in growth rates within Vietnam to test empirically whether growth leads to lower corruption. The analysis uses survey data collected from over 13,000 Vietnamese firms...

Deforestation in developing and middle income countries is an urgent global problem, affecting climate change, soil erosion, major river basins, and livelihoods of poor households living near the forests. Public discussions of the problem are frequently dominated by widely held beliefs...

There is perhaps only one broad certainty in the contemporary debate on climate change: not only does climate change affect different nations and communities differently, but the responses of individual stakeholders and institutions are also quite different, primarily because of their different...

Even though the economic and social benefits of thriving entrepreneurship and innovation are evident, it is critical to recognize that these benefits will only accrue if the key gaps in the ecosystem are addressed. Five key areas that an entrepreneur would need to address on a priority basis are...

A longitudinal household survey from World Bank Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) was used for the study. A relatively small (but representative) sample of households residing in the mountainous regions of Nepal (i.e., excluding the low-lying Terai regions) were surveyed in three...

This essay provides a game-theoretic, endogenous view of institutions, and then applies the idea to identify the sources of institutional trajectories of economic development in China, Japan, and Korea. It stylizes the Malthusian-phase of East Asian economies as peasant-based economies in which...