Changes in the population age structure can have a significant effect on fiscal sustainability since they can affect both government revenues and expenditures. For example, population aging will increase expenditures on the elderly while reducing potential growth and hence revenues. In this...

Using international data starting 1957, we construct a sample of cases where fast-growing economies slow down. The evidence suggests that rapidly growing economies slow down significantly, in the sense that the growth rate downshifts by at least 2 percentage points when their per capita incomes...

In the past 10 years, the service sector has been a significant contributor to overall economic growth in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Uzbekistan, and Viet Nam. Sector growth has been supported by strong industrial growth in some while in others the critical factors have been...

Asia as a whole is experiencing a rapid demographic transition toward older populations, though different countries are at different stages of this region wide trend. We document Asia's aging population, describe the region's old-age support systems, and highlight the regional socioeconomic...

The demographic dividend that contributed substantially to economic growth in developing Asia in the past is dissipating. Population aging affects growth through savings, capital accumulation, labor force participation, and total factor productivity. We examined the impact of aging on those four...

The European Union (EU) has traditionally been an important economic partner for Asia. In addition to absorbing a significant share of the region's exports, the EU has been a major source of foreign direct investment and other capital flows into the region. In light of such close economic...

The maturing of the manufacturing sector in many Asian countries, combined with the relative backwardness of its service sector, has made service sector development a top priority for developing Asia. Our central objective is to broadly survey and analyze the current landscape of the region's...

The underdeveloped service sector in Asia has the potential to become a new engine of economic growth for developing Asia, which has traditionally relied on export-oriented manufacturing to power its growth. The central objective of this paper is to empirically analyze the prospects for the...

We apply a stochastic frontier production model to data from 53 countries during 1991-2003 to estimate total factor productivity growth, and decompose it into technical efficiency change and technical progress. Our empirical results indicate that world productivity growth was led by fast-growing...

Developing Asia has traditionally relied on exports to the United States (US) and other industrialized countries for demand and growth. As a result, the collapse of exports to the US and other industrialized countries during the global financial and economic crisis has sharply curtailed gross...