While the worldwide spread of smartphones continues, developing countries have become important markets for these devices. Smartphones’ independence of landline networks qualifies them for communication and Internet access in rural areas of developing countries. Drawing upon rural Southeast...

The border regions between Northeast India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Southwest China are characterized by close historical, intra-ethnic relations and a developing civil society sector as well as violent conflicts and disputes about hydropower and resource extraction projects. What is more, this...

Foreign direct investment has been of great importance in economic growth and global economic integration over the last decades. South East Asia has been part of this development with rapidly increasing inflows of FDI. However, there are large variations over time and between countries in the...

This chapter begins by noting that culture as an element in economic development in the Third World has been largely neglected in traditional development economics, most writers either seeing culture as an obstacle to development or ignoring it altogether. Recently a shift in thinking has...

Besides enabling communication, mobile phones and smartphones support information flows and financial transactions, especially in developing countries, where the coverage of landline networks is limited. Drawing upon new data from rural households in Southeast Asia, this paper shows that mobile...