While openness to trade is a well-recognized hallmark of the Asian growth model, another component of the model is a leapfrogging strategy - the use of policies to guide industrial structural transformation ahead of a country's factor endowment. Does the leapfrogging strategy work? Opinions vary...

This research explores the effects of culture on technological diffusion and economic development. It shows that culture's direct effects on development and barrier effects to technological diffusion are, in general, observationally equivalent. In particular, using a large set of measures of...

The positive influences of institutions to economic growth, commonly measured by GDP per capita, have been intensively tested by many empirical studies. However, as the challenges of pollution, corruption, and inequality raise up, the quality of economic development and how to achieve the good...

Growth matters for poverty reduction and the achievement of other MDGs, but the pattern of growth matters more. This paper, based on the MDG experience, identified and analysed a large number of economic policy measures which can make growth more sustained, inclusive and equitable, so as to be...

The COVID-19 pandemic holds at least seven lessons for the relationship between data-driven decision making, the use of artificial intelligence, and development. These are that (1) in a global crisis, the shifting value of data creates policy pitfalls; (2) predictions of crises and how they play...

Education, general health, and reproductive health are key indicators of human development. Investments in these domains can also promote economic growth. This paper argues for the importance of human development related investments based on i) a theoretical economic growth model with poverty...

Despite extensive policy discussion, limited empirical literature is available concerning the impacts of infrastructure on human development. Furthermore, major infrastructure services, such as transport and energy, are missing in the current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) framework;...

This paper explores how the concept of resilience has been used in development studies. Set amidst the rise of resilience in sustainable development, it offers insights for scholars and policy-makers, alike. Sampling 419 resilience-oriented journal articles from 2017-22, it uses Kuhnian...

Thomas Piketty's (2013) book, Capital in the 21st Century, follows in the tradition of the great classical economists, like Marx and Ricardo, in formulating general laws of capitalism to diagnose and predict the dynamics of inequality. We argue that general economic laws are unhelpful as a guide...