The novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, has brought significant change to people's lives and business activities nationally, regionally, and globally. The Philippines took swift action-including enhanced community quarantine (ECQ)-to contain the pandemic and launched an emergency subsidy...

Mobilizing private finance for renewable energy and energy efficiency is critical for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) not only for the reduction of global temperature rise, but also for meeting fast growing energy demand. Two-thirds of green bonds issued in ASEAN countries...

India has an estimated 26,000 startups, making it the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world, recording consolidated inflows of over $36 billion in the past 3 years with 26 "unicorns" - startups valued over $1 billion. The Indian startup ecosystem has expanded quite rapidly mainly through...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the Asian economy. They make up more than 96% of all Asian businesses that provide two out of three private sector jobs in the continent. Therefore, it is vitally important for the Asian economies' economic success that they have...

The cost of finance has a relatively high impact on the returns and viability of clean energy projects compared with fossil fuel-based energy projects, because the operating costs for renewable energy projects are very low. Credit risk assessment and ratings, which have usually been an...

This paper verifies the impact of bank account information, such as information on deposits and withdrawals, that is not necessarily fully accounted for in conventional internal ratings and that can affect the accuracy of the default predictions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The...

Placing the Asian economies onto a sustainable development pathway requires an unprecedented shift in investment away from greenhouse gas, fossil fuel and natural resource intensive industries towards more resource efficient technologies and business models. The financial sector will have to...

The main objective of this paper is to understand how the changes in the macroeconomic conditions (the global financial crisis) relate to the investment and financial decision-making for each of the different size categories of SMEs. To do so, we use a large dataset of 764,963 observations in...

Small businesses are considered one of the sources of innovation, productivity and dynamism in many countries. Thus, to translate innovative ideas into sustainable businesses, access to capital becomes a part and parcel of their business lifecycle. Despite their potential importance for economic...

The International Energy Agency estimates that $24.5 trillion of energy efficiency (EE) investments will be needed through 2040. Debt- and self-financed projects are expected to contribute only a third of this capital due to multiple barriers. On the one hand, self-financed projects require...