The diffusion of manufacturing supply chains worldwide has provoked a fierce debate over how to effectively monitor and promote compliance with labor standards in supply chain factories (Frenkle and Scott 2002; Fung, O’Rourke, and Sabel 2001; O’Rouke 2003; Weil 1996). In this paper we aim to identify...

How large are the benefits of transportation infrastructure projects, and what explains these benefits? To shed new light on these questions, I collect archival data from colonial India and use it to estimate the impact of India's vast railroad network. Guided by six predictions from a general...

This paper provides a comprehensive description of the financial environment for households and small businesses in a defined geographical region. It develops a new, functional approach to financial access surveys, which involves asking detailed questions about how respondents meet their...

The period of 1840 (when the Opium War broken out) till now is commonly regarded as China’s modern era, ‘modern’ in terms of China’s departure from its original growth and developmental path. In this context, the term modern has been intimately associated with something alien to the...

This paper provides a detailed analysis of the evolving relationship between the British trading company John Swire and Sons and its Chinese partners involved in the distribution of its products, notably sugar. From the nineteenth century, Swire had utilised the Chinese system of the Comprador....

In the process of China's foreign exchange reform, the so-called swap market was a key element. Despite the problems it caused, notably those associated with a dual exchange rate, the paper argues that the swap market proved to be a useful transition mechanism for China's foreign exchange...

For a long period in the twentieth century, the development of the Japanese corporation appeared congruent with the development of the Japanese economy. The growth maximising behaviour of the Japanese corporation and the preference for internal growth over acquisitions (see Odagiri, 1992)...

We use a simple model of sequential duopoly to examine the effect of different industrial structures on firms' output decision and profit shares in the international market for raw and processed tropical timber products. The model provides insights that can be applied to the Indonesian logging...

Credit market imperfections have been blamed for the depth and persistence of the Great Depression in the USA. Could similar mechanisms have played a role in ending the East Asian miracle? After a brief account of the nature of the recent crisis, we use a model of highly levered...

Three decades of macroeconomic reforms, sustained growth and global integration have turned China into a future economic power of global magnitude, with unmatched breadth of resources and a robust manufacturing sector. That China?s growth performance is comparable to that of the US and the UK is...