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 three pillars of Asian energy security are an adequate, reliable supply; environmental sustainability; and affordable access for all. As Asians become more affluent, managing demand by tackling outmoded subsidies so prices reflect true costs, exploring green innovations in technology and...

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...

This paper reviews the recent progress toward gender equality in developing Asia by examining a number of indicators proposed under the Millennium Development Goal 3 plus approach, focusing on gender inequalities in education and health outcomes (capability) and in labor market and political...

This study develops a framework to forecast India's gross domestic product growth on a quarterly frequency from 2004 to 2018. The models, which are based on real and monetary sector descriptions of the Indian economy, are estimated using Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) techniques. The real...

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...

We review the growth experience of middle-income countries. Economic factors associated with growth appear to differ between middle income and other countries. The efficiency of the financial system is importantly related to the growth rate in low- and middle-income countries, but appears to...

The Chinese economy is slowing down and, at the same time, it is in the midst of a structural transformation from an export- and investment-led economy to a domestic demand- and consumption-led growth paradigm. While there are widespread concerns in the People's Republic of China's (PRC) trading...

A sound and efficient financial system is an indispensable ingredient of economic growth. It consists primarily of banks and capital markets, which channel savings into investments and other productive activities that contribute to economic growth and augment the economy's productive capacity....