This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the role of financial sector development, with a view to deepening understanding of the rationale of development assistance to the financial sector of developing countries. The review leads to the following broad conclusions: (i)...

How much would output increase if underdeveloped economies were to increase their levels of schooling? We contribute to the development accounting literature by describing a non-parametric upper bound on the increase in output that can be generated by more levels of schooling. The advantage of...

While developing Asia has recovered strongly from the global crisis, the region faces the medium- and long-term challenge of sustaining growth beyond the crisis. The central objective of this paper is to empirically investigate the sources of economic growth in 12 developing Asian economies...

The pullbacks of capital inflows to developing Asia following the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008 have brought renewed attention to the role and benefits of financial globalization. A number of notable distinctions between the current global crisis and the Asian financial crisis...

Advanced economies have a significantly longer history of using fiscal policy to tackle inequality and promote inclusive growth than those in developing Asia. Therefore, as developing Asia explores the more active use of fiscal policy for inclusive purposes, it can learn from the experiences of...

This paper develops a framework to assess the growth and distribution effects of fiscal resources. Resources are classified as debt, other capital receipts, foreign aid and other unilateral grants, non-tax revenue, including resource rents, seigniorage, and taxes. The framework is used to assess...

This paper uses the empirical relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction observed between 1990 and 2005 and different scenarios for economic growth to get a sense of how the economic slowdown in the region will affect the incidence of poverty. Since most countries that we work...

The growth diagnostics methodology pioneered by Hausmann et al. (2005) is becoming a key piece of the toolkit for donor agencies in formulate their operational strategies. This paper aims at clarifying the primary objectives of the approach, highlighting some limitations for operational use. The...

Why do some economies grow faster than others? Do economies in the middle-income range face especially difficult challenges producing consistent growth? Using a transition matrix analysis on decade-level growth rates, we find that the data clearly reject the idea that middle-income economies...