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...

Asia's rapid population aging fortifies the case for strengthening human capital investments. Further, the experience of the newly industrialized economies suggests that human capital investments will be a vital ingredient of the transition from middle income to high income. Those investments...

The central objective of our paper is to empirically examine the relationship between financial development and income inequality. Theoretically, there are grounds for both a positive and negative relationship between the two variables. Our main finding is that financial development contributes...

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...

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 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 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...

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...

While there are growing concerns about population aging, some studies explore the possibility that population aging can give rise to a silver dividend that contributes to economic growth (ADB 2019). While the demographic dividend refers to the increase of the working-age population, the silver...