Exiting the middle-income trap entails costly improvements in state capacity. That deep economic integration induces powerful actors to support increasing state capacities remain underresearched. Here we ask: Under what conditions can deep economic integration yield increases in state capacity?...

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...

Since 1990, countries in emerging Europe and Central Asia have undergone comprehensive economic transformation. These reforms helped achieve an impressive degree of income convergence toward the levels of the advanced economies, although at the cost of rising inequality and lower life...

This is done in relation to the benchmark of World Economic Outlook (WEO) projections by the International Monetary Fund. Amid much heterogeneity across countries and years, it has been found that ADO and WEO projections overlap quite closely. Both are inaccurate, especially during crisis years,...

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 transition from low-income developing countr y to high-income developed country involves a deep process of structural transformation in which the productive structure of an economy changes. In this paper we examine this process of structural chan ge and its link to productivity growth for a...

One of the key determinants of potential growth are productivity gains. Total factor productivity (TFP) differences are the main determinant of per capita income differences between countries. A key factor to understand TFP is misallocation: the aggregate productivity loss from microeconomic...

Developing Asia has benefited greatly from the rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), primarily through the trade channel. The PRC and its neighbors have collectively formed a regional production network, and the PRC is becoming an increasingly important source of final demand. Two...

Potential output growth generally decelerated after the global financial crisis during 2008-2009. This paper examines the possible determinants of potential output growth using Bayesian Model Averaging and assesses how the determinants can be used to increase the growth of potential output. It...