The continued difficulties of the World Trade Organization to achieve further multilateral trade liberalization in the Doha Round negotiations have raised questions about its continued relevance. This paper firstly identifies and assesses the key developments in the Doha Round that have...

The objective of this paper is to study how manufacturing plants in India adjusted to trade liberalization during the period 1998-99 to 2007-08. We estimate how the labor share changed due to tariff reduction. Our results indicate that a decline in output tariffs led to an increase in the labor...

Asia is fast becoming the largest recipient of Japan's foreign direct investment (FDI). Within the Asian region, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been the major investment destination of Japan. In the manufacturing sectors, however, the investment flows from Japan to ASEAN...

In this paper we examine the changing nature of Japan's commercial policy over the last 25 years while reviewing Japan's changing structure of trade, FDI and economy that underlay policy changes. We argue that until the late 1990s Japan adopted a two-track approach of relying on multilateral...

This study sheds light on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) financing and its performance in Thailand. It elaborates on the key sources of finance existing for Thai manufacturing SMEs and their importance for SME performance as measured by technical efficiency, export performance, and...

This paper investigates the trends and determinants of geographic concentration and industrial specialization in the People's Republic of China (PRC) using interprovincial panel data for the period from 1999 to 2010. It shows that, after 2005, both geographic concentration and industrial...

The paper examines the impact of foreign-licensed technology and identifies channels to effectively leverage such technology to improve the performance of manufacturing firms in the Philippines. Using the fixed effects approach to World Bank Enterprise Survey panel data for the Philippines...

This paper aims to examine how the diversity of global engagement is related to firms' participation in innovation input and output activities in the Malaysian manufacturing sector. The study uses firm-level data obtained from the World Bank's Enterprise Survey 2015. Firms are classified into...

The relationship between large enterprises (LEs) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Japan has undergone major changes during the long-term recession since 1991. While SMEs still play the important role of supplying parts and components to LEs through subcontracting, many LEs have started...

This paper investigates the trends and determinants of geographic concentration and industrial specialization in the People's Republic of China (PRC) using interprovincial panel data for the period from 1999 to 2010. It shows that, after 2005, both geographic concentration and industrial...