The Pacific Islands face the highest disaster risk, in per capita terms, globally. Examples of catastrophic events in the region include the 2009 tsunami in Samoa, the 2014 floods in the Solomon Islands, and the 2015 cyclone Pam in Vanuatu. Even without these catastrophic events, countries in...

In this paper we estimate the impact of road development on household welfare in rural Papua New Guinea over the period between 1996 and 2010, using two cross-sectional household surveys and corresponding road maps. To deal with endogenous placement of road infrastructure programs we employ a...

This paper investigates the role of 'absorptive capacity' to manage unexpected shocks to their real economy, with a focus on small, open, natural resource-dependent economies. A quarterly panel data series for 45 countries is constructed, including 23 developing Asian countries for empirical...