This paper has two main objectives. First, it assesses and measures the gaps in the stock of human capital across the world. It presents how effectively different regions are improving their stock of human capital, and how long it will take for developing countries to catch up with the current...

Rebalancing growth toward domestic demand has emerged as a key postcrisis challenge for sustaining developing Asia’s rapid growth in the medium and long term. The central objective of this paper is to explore the role of fiscal policy in the region’s rebalancing process. What matters most...

As the global crisis hit developing Asia, several countries instituted fiscal stimulus measures to create domestic demand. With the region returning to normal times, in this paper we draw lessons using historical data from 10 developing Asian countries to examine if countercyclical fiscal policy...

Developing Asia’s rapid economic growth has been shifting the global economic and industrial centers of gravity away from the North Atlantic, raising the importance of Asia in world trade, and boosting South–South trade. How will trade patterns change over the next 2 decades in the course of...

This paper surveys the empirical and theoretical link between education and growth in the growth process of Asian countries. Particular attention is paid to the link between education and productivity, and to models that characterize key features of growth processes of Asian countries. Empirical...

Using a growth accounting framework, we find that developing Asia grew rapidly over the past 3 decades mainly due to robust growth in capital accumulation. The contributions of education and total factor productivity in the region’s past economic growth remain relatively limited. Our baseline...

Energy security has been an important global policy issue for more than 4 decades. Transport biofuels like bioethnol have been receiving increased attention in recent years as a solution to heavy dependence on imported petroleum fuels, which brings destabilizing price effects on the economy and...

We apply a stochastic frontier production model to data from 53 countries during 1991–2003 to estimate total factor productivity growth, and decompose it into technical efficiency change and technical progress. Our empirical results indicate that world productivity growth was led by...

Developing Asia has weathered the global economic crisis well and is experiencing a rapid, robust V-shaped recovery. According to conventional wisdom, the fiscal stimulus packages put in place by the region’s governments played a key role in the region’s superior postcrisis performance. The...

Fiscal stimulus programs have contributed substantially to developing Asia’s faster and stronger than expected recovery from the global financial crisis. This may lead to political pressures for greater use of countercyclical fiscal policy in the postcrisis period. However, the countercyclical...