South Asian countries, facing challenges in efficiently meeting growing electricity demand, can benefit from increased cross-border electricity cooperation and trade by harnessing complementarities in electricity demand patterns, diversity in resource endowments for power generation, and gains...

This paper provides a different basis than previous analyses for regional bloc formation and regional migration. Due to low bargaining power and fixed costs, small states face a severe disadvantage in negotiations with the rest of the world and might benefit by forming a regional bloc. The study...

This study examines the major health, water, environmental, tourism and other welfare impacts associated with poor sanitation in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. By examining the economic impacts of poor sanitation, and the potential gains from improved sanitation, this study...

This paper investigates the extent of China's export boom in machinery and analyzes trade in components and finished machinery between China and Southeast Asia. China has increased its world market share in machinery exports. The median relative unit value of its finished machinery exports has...

Mega urban regions are not a passing phenomenon. They are likely to persist and to enlarge their economic footprints because they benefit from the advantages of market scale, agglomeration economies, location, and the increasing concentration of talented workers. Metropolitan regions which are...

East and Southeast Asia face major demographic changes over the next few decades as many countries' labor forces will start to decline, while others will experience higher labor force growth as populations and participation rates increase. A well-managed labor migration strategy presents itself...

The recent Asian currency crisis was caused by large prospective fiscal deficits associated with implicit bailout guarantees to failing banking systems. Absent the political will to raise taxes or cut spending, governments must resort to seignorage revenues to pay for the bailout of the banking...

Special economic zones can be an effective instrument to promote industrialization if implemented properly in the right context. In China, starting in the 1980s, special economic zones were used as a testing ground for the country's transition from a planned to a market economy, and they are a...

Like many other developing countries, South Asian nations have been experiencing increased foreign direct investment inflows over the past decade as developing countries get a larger share of cross-border investments that were once sent to developed countries. Nonetheless, South Asia's inflows...

International negotiations on climate change have been dogged by mutual recriminations between rich and poor countries, constricted by the zero-sum arithmetic of a shrinking global carbon budget, and overtaken by shifts in economic power between industrialized and developing countries. To...