Financial inclusion is a multidimensional concept and countries have chosen diverse methods of enhancing financial inclusion with varying degrees of results. The heterogeneity of financial inclusion is particularly striking in the Asia-Pacific region as member countries range from those that are...

Tax compliance costs tend to be disproportionately higher for small and young businesses. This paper examines how the quality of tax administration affects firm performance for a large sample of firms in emerging market and developing economies. We construct a novel, internationally comparable,...

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) play an important role in Emerging Europe's economies, notably in the energy and transport sectors. Based on a new firm-level dataset, this paper reviews the SOE landscape, assesses SOE performance across countries and vis-a-vis private firms, and evaluates recent...

Based on U.S. data, the returns on foreign direct investment in emerging markets are shown to be substantially higher than would be suggested by official balance of payments statistics. This paper identifies the determinants of FDI profitability in 43 industrialized and developing countries....

The literature on the investment technology of foreign versus domestic investors has inconclusive results. This paper revisits the question, with a focus on decomposing portfolio performance into asset allocation and security selection. We document signicant differences in exposure to systematic...

Regional integration of Pacific Island countries (PICs) with Australia, New Zealand, and emerging Asia has increased over the last two decades. PICs have become more exposed to the region's business cycles, and spillovers from regional economies are more important for PICs than from advanced...

This paper proposes an easy-to-follow approach to track merchandise trade using vessel data and applies it to Pacific island countries. Pacific islands rely heavily on imports and maritime transport for trade. They are also highly vulnerable to climate change and natural disasters that pose...

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a collapse in international tourism, severely impacting the tourism-dependent economies in the Asia and Pacific region. Once countries start reopening, tourism diversion effects could accelerate the recovery in countries that establish themselves as more attractive...

Pacific Islands countries are vulnerable to commodity price shocks, and this poses challenges to monetary policy. The high degree of exchange rate pass-through to headline inflation and the weak monetary transmission mechanism in PICs suggest a greater efficacy of exchange rate changes in...