This paper investigates how the two types of globalization—i.e., integration of international trade and emigration—affected poverty reduction in the Philippines. Using the Family Income and Expenditure Surveys from 1985 to 2000, we found that both nontransfer and transfer incomes decreased...

The administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is pushing for the creation of the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF). Originally proposed as a sovereign wealth fund, the MIF later on morphed into what can be called a sovereign investment fund (SIF): a state-owned investment fund that aims to...

Development economists have considered physical infrastructure to be a precondition for industrialization and economic development. Yet, two issues remain to be addressed in the literature. First, while proper identification of the causal effectiveness of infrastructure in reducing poverty is...

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated school closures exacerbated the global learning crisis, especially for children in developing countries. Teaching at the right level is gaining greater importance in the policy arena to recover the learning loss. However, the focus on the noncognitive...

This paper provides new evidence of the effects of road construction on both domestic and international trade flows in the People's Republic of China (PRC) using customs data and information on transport investments in the region, including those supported by multilateral development banks. We...

Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) are recognized as crucial drivers of economic development, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The advent of digital platforms, characterized by economies of scale and significant cross-network externalities in two-sided markets,...

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic disrupted businesses, economies, and societies worldwide. This study employs unique data from Indonesia to investigate whether and how digitalization of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) helped them weather the adverse shocks from the...

In this paper, we review the overall micro, small, and medium-sized enterprise landscape in Asia, including the challenges and constraints faced by enterprises in physical (offline) and online markets. We then explore the unique circumstances and externalities that arise due to the special...

This study quantifies the economic impacts of SARS on the four affected Asian economies and the two most affected Chinese regions using synthetic control methods with macroeconomic and remote-sensing nightlight data. For the four affected economies (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore), we...

The lack of suitable data is a key challenge in ex-post policy evaluations. This paper proposes a novel data to measure local economic activities using vehicle counts in each 500 meter (m) x 500 m tile. The metric is derived from high resolution satellite images using a machine learning...