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...

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...

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)...

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...

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...

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...

There are significant income and nonincome development gaps around the world. Closing these gaps will require not only increasing and sustaining economic growth in low-income regions, but also policies that close nonincome development gaps directly. Governments need to support private investment...