Upstream nonpoint source pollution has become a significant threat to urban drinking water safety in the People's Republic of China. Payment for environmental services (PES) is seen as a promising mechanism to deal with the situation. In designing a sound PES, it is crucial to determine the...

The construction of a New Socialist Countryside (NSC) is among the highlights in the People's Republic of China's (PRC) 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010). The NSC aims to accelerate the development and modernization of the agricultural and rural economy in order to close the widening rural-urban...

We develop a framework to analyze urban water tariff setting and its welfare implications and apply it to a panel of cities in the People's Republic of China in the 2000s. First, we find that peer cities' water tariff levels have a significant influence on a city's choice of tariffs. We use the...

This paper introduces a new city-level panel dataset constructed using satellite nighttime light imagery and grid population data. The dataset contains over 1,500 cities covering 43 economies of Asia and the Pacific from 1992 to 2016. With the dataset, we perform a variety of analyses for Asia...

The widespread adoption of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) have been advocated on the premise that it will result in significant savings in electricity and reduced carbon emissions. Using a household level survey of electrical lighting and usage in Pakistan, we examine the decision to...

This paper presents evidence on the spatial distribution and effects of urban agglomeration on firm innovation. It uses a unique dataset that consistently defines city boundaries and identifies firms’ innovation-related activities across 25 developing countries in Asia. We find firm innovation...

Throughout 2020, national and subnational governments worldwide implemented nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to contain the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). These included community quarantines, also known as lockdowns, of varying length, scope, and stringency that restricted...

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)...