From April 2013 until May 2016, Japan's monetary base rose from ¥155 trillion to ¥387 trillion as part of the Bank of Japan's (BOJ) quantitative and qualitative easing (QQE) monetary policy for achieving a price stability target of 2%. Although the main objective of the BOJ's quantitative...

In 2016, 88.90% of Asia and the Pacific's primary energy consumption was from fossil fuel, and almost 40% of the global CO2 emissions were from Asia and the Pacific. In order to ensure the increasing energy needs of the region are in line with sustainable development goals, addressing the...

In April 2013, the Bank of Japan (BOJ), in order to overcome deflation and achieve sustainable economic growth, introduced an inflation target of 2 %. However due to the lower oil prices in the global market, this target could not be achieved for a long-term period. In Feb 2016, the BOJ took...

One of the main challenges in low-income Asia and the Pacific countries is users' willingness to pay for water services. In contrast, investors and private operators in the water sector prefer a high rate of return. This has often led to the failure of public-private partnerships for water...

A sustainable financing strategy for SMEs should aim to enhance a low-cost collateral-free supply of loans to SMEs with good track records of repayments to banks. This paper suggests two alternative financing mechanisms to overcome certain borrowing constraints of SMEs. First, it suggests an...

The Japanese Fiscal Investment and Loan Progam (FILP) will be fundamentally changed in April 2001. We are comparing the pre- and post-reform Japanese system with the German system of policy-based finance and we have found that the German system is quite different. In the case of the...

SMEs often have severe difficulties raising money. Considering the bank-dominated characteristic of economies in Asia, banks are the main source of financing. In order to prevent the accumulation of non-performing loans in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector, it is crucial for...

This paper tests whether local financial development matters for SMEs' growth performance. We develop a theoretical model framework based on banks' and firms' profit-maximizing behavior that critically hinges upon credit default risk ratio. We argue that an expansion of branch network would...