It is argued that for households below poverty line any expenditure on health is catastrophic as they are unable to attain the subsistence level of consumption. Thus, zero percent is taken as a threshold level to define catastrophic health expenditure and examine the impact of health insurance...

In India, the out-of-pocket health expenditure by households accounts for around 70 percent of the total expenditure on health. Large out-of-pocket payments may reduce consumption expenditure on other goods and services and push households into poverty. Recently, health insurance has been...

The results highlight the conflicting interests of countries — to stabilize exchange rates or to keep the option of exchange rate depreciation in order to maintain competitiveness of domestic tradable producers. With deepening integration in East Asia, however, the desire for exchange...

The information and communication technology (ICT) revolution of the past 3 decades has transformed the world into an integrated marketplace. Today, producers and consumers alike are able to compare the prices of local businesses and worldwide sellers. For an increasing number of tradable goods,...

Looking back at the history of the World Trade Organization (WTO), major accords that have been reached under the multilateral framework to date are in substance issue-based “plurilateral†agreements. This paper looks at some specific examples of issue-based plurilateral...

This paper analyzes the current status of fisheries and aquaculture in Southeast Asia and international trade. Analysis concludes that a policy of sustainable management for both capture fisheries and aquaculture is of greatest importance, but such a policy has been neither planned nor...

This paper investigates the effect of regional borders on trade in Asia. The regional borders define the three regions of Asia : South, Southeast, and East Asia. Regional trade indicates the flows of trade within a region, whereas regional border trade means trade across regions. A gravity model...

The information and communication technology (ICT) revolution of the past 3 decades has transformed the world into an integrated marketplace. Today, producers and consumers alike are able to compare the prices of local businesses and worldwide sellers. For an increasing number of tradable goods,...

We present a theoretical framework for policy making based on the “impossible trinity†or the “trilemma†hypothesis. A simple optimization model shows that placing more weight in terms of preference for each of the three open macroeconomic policies—exchange rate...