The prolonged investment decline in post-Asian crisis emerging Asia, in contrast to the swift recovery of economic growth, has remained a puzzle. This paper shows that the post-crisis investment recession has been mainly concentrated in the nontradable sector, and hypothesizes that the slowdown...

The paper uses firm-level data to assess the financial health of the Vietnamese non-financial corporate sector on the eve of pandemic. Our analysis finds that smaller domestic firms were particularly vulnerable even by regional comparison. A sensitivity analysis suggests that the COVID-19 shock...

This paper examines exchange rate behavior in the ASEAN-5 countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand). It finds that for the last 10 years there is no evidence that their central banks target particular exchange rate levels against any currency or basket. Thus,...

After many years of rapid expansion, China's growth is slowing to more sustainable levels and is rebalancing, with consumption becoming the main growth driver. This transition is likely to have negative effects on its trading partners in the near term. This paper studies the potential spillovers...

This paper looks at the effects of a China slowdown on Emerging Market Economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand) and Frontier Developing Economies (Cambodia, Lao P.D.R., and Vietnam) in ASEAN. The main finding is that the impact of China growth shocks on ASEAN has risen since the global...

Over the past decades ASEAN countries have experienced rapid economic growth accompanied by a dramatic fall in poverty rates, but income inequality has not retreated. This research aims at identifying factors which could contribute to more equally distributed growth in ASEAN. To measure...