Will a free trade agreements (FTAs) between nations be politically viable？Under political lobby what incentives determine whether FTAs will be signed or not? Will FTAs include steadily more countries until we reach worldwide free trade? The paper addresses these questions using a theoretical...

The paper traces the determinants of depositor discipline in Indian banking. Using data for the period 1997:1 to 2002:4, the findings reveal that, while bank-specific factors are dominant in case of state-owned banks, systemic variables tend to overwhelm bank-specific factors in explaining...

This paper examines whether education empowers women. We exploit an exogenous variation in education induced by a longer school year in Indonesia in 1978, which fits a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. We find education reduces the number of live births, increases contraceptive use, and...

This is a keynote address at the ASEAN-SEAFDEC conference on Sustainable Fisheries for Food Security Towards 2020, Fish for the People 2020: Adaptation to a Changing Environment. It addresses theme one of the conference which is Enhancing Governance in Fisheries Management. With the...

This paper addresses the question how knowledge is used to benefit the economic development of Singapore and Malaysia. Both countries have followed strict science policies to establish knowledge governance regimes for a knowledge-based economy. On the basis of empirical studies in both countries...

This paper uses multivariate regression analysis to explore the time and birth cohort trends of women’s empowerment in eight countries of South Asia and South East Asia. The measures of women’s empowerment are: economic participation, educational attainment, wage work, fertility, female to...

ABSTRACT Singapore plays a leading role in changing the destiny of post colonial countries in Asian region, by heralding the unique success path of economic growth, industrial competitiveness coupled with political stability and transparency. Even though the country was constrained by...

This paper describes the methods used to construct an index to measure the maritime potential of nations. This prototype uses a limited number of variables to measure (a) the locational advantage of having a long coastline in comparison to the landmass (Maritime Potential Index MPI) , (b) the...

Using unconditional quantile regression combined with Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, we study the gender wage differentials over the whole distribution in Thailand from 1991 to 2007. A V-shape pattern of the overall gender gap is observed in each year, most attributable to the wage structure...

In recent years currency crises affected not only Southeast Asian countries, but transition economies as well. The Russian crisis of August 1998 was perhaps the most spectacular example, but it was preceded by currency crises in Bulgaria and Romania in 1996-97, in Ukraine and Belarus in 1997-98...