The paper argues that the Indian Managing Agencies that controlled most industrial firms and their associated enterprises were themselves embodiments of pre-industrial forms of capital, accumulated through trading and moneylending. This militated against technological dynamism within the...

We document a positive association between political uncertainty and accounting conservatism. In the year prior to a U.S. presidential election, on average, accounting conservatism increases by nearly 20 percent. This election year effect is stronger when the election is closer, when the...

Economic historians have offered several explanations for China’s cycles of silverisation and de-silverisation in the 18th and 19th centuries focusing either on exogenous supply shortages in world silver markets or an outflow of silver as a consequence of opium imports. This paper challenges...

Central banks can play an important role in facilitating and promoting regional economic and monetary integration. Examples are the European monetary union and a more recent initiative by a group of Asian central banks to boost liquidity in local bond markets in Asia through the “Asian Bond...

This paper has been prepared on the basis of the recorded deliberations of the participants attended in the conference “Microfinance in SAARC Countries: Sharing Lessons & Way forward” organized in November-December, 2010, jointly by the Institute of Microfinance (InM), Bangladesh, and Rural...

Amidst the global financial uncertainties since 2007, the East and Southeast Asian economies continued to attract a significant bulk of the global banks’ loans to emerging markets, albeit at a decelerating rate. The alleged advantages of these lending are wellknown. Yet the recent interruption...

This documents attempts to present, in a concise manner the historical evolution,the various functions, as well as the present organizational setup of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). There was a great need for such a study and I am glad that Mr. Farooq Arby, a research economist at SBP has...

The paper examines the role of the informal rural credit markets in the palestinian agricultural development at the end of the Ottoman Empire. The analysis starts from the long term effects of the legal reforms, particularly the Ottoman Land Code, on the performance of these markets. Such...

This study seeks to address a number of rising policy concerns from the aftermath of the recent subprime crisis. Did foreign bank lending decline sharply and transmit the financial shocks from the advanced economies to the SEACEN emerging markets? Was the decline driven by the drying-up in...

Different versions of the South Asian Economic Zone has been discussing in the literature. The basic and important justification behind the formation of South Asian Free Economic Zone is not directly concerned with the economic benefits; it is justified on the basis of cultural and historical...