As India seeks to strengthen trade, investment and other forms of economic cooperation with ASEAN, Myanmar is an essential strategic partner, since it is the only ASEAN nation with which India shares both land and maritime borders. As a "gateway" to South East Asia, Myanmar is also vital in...

India and Nepal have traditionally shared a unique relationship of friendship and economic cooperation. The relationship is characterized by an open and people-friendly border and is built on shared historical, cultural, linguistic, ethnic links between people residing in India and Nepal. With...

The year 2018 was a milestone year for India-Bhutan relationship as the countries celebrated the accomplishments of the last fifty years of time-tested and special ties. The mutually beneficial economic ties have been the centre-piece of India-Bhutan relationship. India is Bhutan's largest...

Nepal, a landlocked country, relies on transit access from neighbouring countries to participate in international trade. For Nepal, the nearest sea-port is that of Kolkata in India and the transit arrangements between the two countries are governed by two main legal instruments: India-Nepal...

This paper identifies factors associated with takeoff - a sustained period of high growth following a period of stagnation. We examine a panel of 241 stagnation episodes" from 146 countries, 54 % of these episodes are followed by takeoffs. Countries that experience takeoffs average 2.3% annual...

This paper characterizes the effects of reserve requirements on financial loans in the presence of moral hazard on the lender side (i.e., the anticipation that the taxpayer will bailout lending banks if large default will occur) and sovereign risk on the borrower side. The impacts of such...

This paper studies how capital market imperfections affect the welfare effects of forming a currency union. The analysis considers a bank-only world where intermediaries compete in Cournot fashion and monitoring and state verification are costly. The first part determines the credit market...

This paper examines the effect of volatility on the costs and benefits of financial market integration. The basic framework combines the costly state verification model and the contract enforceability approach. The welfare effects of financial market integration are assessed by comparing welfare...

This paper studies the welfare effects of financial integration in the presence of moral hazard. Entrepreneurs face a trade off between risk and return. Banks may mitigate the resultant excessive risk by costly monitoring, where greater risk reduction requires more resources devoted to risk...

This paper evaluates the welfare implications of privatization in emerging market economies, in countries where policies are determined by the median voter. We show that privatization may lead to large efficiency gains by changing the menu of taxes. We illustrate this point with two examples....