This paper argues that the single most important factor that explains East Asia's development success was its fast structural transformation toward industrialization, manufacturing in particular. Workers moved out of agriculture into manufacturing, and the sector diversified and upgraded its...

The rapid accumulation of private debt is widely viewed as a major risk to financial and economic stability. This paper systematically and comprehensively assesses the effect of private debt buildup on economic growth. In the spirit of Mian, Sufi, and Verner (2017) that separately examine the...

A large empirical literature finds that financial development is beneficial for economic growth, although some recent evidence suggests otherwise. We contribute to the finance-growth literature by examining the role of credit growth skewness and long-run growth. Earlier literature found that...

The provision of infrastructure and related services in developing Asia via publi-private partnership (PPP) increased rapidly during the late 1990s. Theoretical arguments support the potential economic benefits of PPPs, but empirical evidence is thin. This paper develops a framework identifying...

The People's Republic of China's (PRC) remarkable growth performance over the last 3 decades has been associated to very robust export growth, so much so that many refer to it as a clear example of export-led growth (ELG). Using the concept of the balance-of-payments equilibrium (BOPE) growth...

We examine the importance of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in middle-income countries based on cross-country panel data for the period 1975-2014. We find that TFP growth contributed significantly to a country’s upward transition from middle-income to high-income country group. The TFP...

Developing Asia has undergone a dramatic shift over the past 5 decades from a region of mainly lowincome economies toward one that is largely middle income. Compared with world aggregate data, developing Asia now has a much greater proportion of middle-income economies. The region faces the...