For over a decade, the economy of Hong Kong has been ranked the freest economy by both the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. and the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada. Rankings of economic freedom tend to make comparisons on the performance of economic freedom among the various world...

We evaluate the impact on household income of Viet Nam's national target programme to build a new countryside for the period from 2010 to 2015. The purpose of the programme is to modernize rural Viet Nam. Given the universal implementation of the programme, we use a quasi-experimental approach...

Trade Liberalisation in developing countries over the last 20 years has often been implemented considering it as a pre-requisite to growth. This paper uses ARDL approach to cointegration and examines the relationships between growth and trade liberalisation in the context of India and Korea....

A growing literature relies on natural experiments to establish causal effects in macroeconomics. In diverse applications, natural experiments have been used to verify underlying assumptions of conventional models, quantify specific model parameters, and identify mechanisms that have major...

The COVID-19 pandemic is imposing economic and broader development challenges as never before. Policy lessons from Asia and the Pacific's past experience in dealing with shocks show that focusing on economic growth alone is not enough. Rising inequality and environmental challenges increased the...

We examine the question: “In the context of gender dimension what is the evidence of the impact of the financial inclusion programs on poor households represented by women relative to that represented by men?” By constructing a good counterfactual and comparison group, we employ the...

The purpose of this study is to measured and analysed the relationship and correlations of the financial literacy, financial well-being, COVID-19 daily life influence, and individual’s monthly income toward the online shopping activities, which is measured through the estimated average monthly...

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 is a major development in the history of poverty reduction strategies and rural development policies in India. Though the successful passage of the Act is due to the long struggle by NGOs, academics, and some policymakers, its successful...

Despite the dramatic reduction of poverty in China over the past thirty-five years, poverty has not been fully eradicated in rural areas, and in the context of growing inequalities, it remains a national concern. This paper examines a local cash-for-work program launched in mountainous areas of...

Islamist groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere have sought to remove females from public life. This paper uses data from Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement and the Global Terrorism Database to examine the impact of the Pakistani Taliban's terror campaign in the...