Using $2$20 (purchasing power parity) per capita daily income as the definition of middle class, majority of households in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) have become middle class by 2007, which is especially impressive given that around 40% of households were still considered poor in 1991....

This paper explores disparities in Millennium Development Goals among countries in the Asia and Pacific region, with a special emphasis on health Millennium Development Goals. It provides estimates on the extent of these disparities and depicts their trends. More importantly, sources or causes...

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 describes the severity of the declines of Asian exports during the recent global crisis and provides more detailed information on the hardest hit manufacturing and exporting industries. To do this, we use various sources of data, including Industrial Statistics of the United Nations...

Wage inequality in Indonesia has decreased over the last two decades. This is in contrast to many developed and developing countries, which have largely seen an increase in wage inequality over this time period. This paper investigates the extent to which minimum wage laws may have contributed...

Annual income data may provide a misleading indicator of enduring income inequality in societies where there is considerable year-to-year income mobility. Using two rounds of data on households, the paper measures income mobility in the People's Republic of China (PRC) between the early 1990s...

This paper seeks to analyze the factors affecting the growth of enterprises in the Philippines, as measured from the expansion of employment. The paper contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it attempts to provide a comprehensive background of the various policies and legislations...

In most developing countries, income inequality tends to worsen during initial stages of growth, especially in urban areas. The People's Republic of China (PRC) provides a sharp contrast where income inequality among urban households is lower than that among rural households. In terms of...

We examine the effects of a mandated credit program to small and medium enterprises in the Philippines (Magna Carta Law) using a panel dataset compiled from official data published by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. The final sample of 109 financial institutions represented over 90% of total...

The impacts of climate change on agricultural production in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) are significant, and differ across regions and crops. The substantial regional differences will induce changes in the agricultural interregional trade pattern. In this paper, we investigate the...