During the interwar years, Japanese industrialisation accelerated alongside the expansion of industrial exports to regional markets. Trade blocs in the interwar years were used as an instrument of imperial power to foster exports and as a substitute for productivity to encourage industrial...

Since the late 1970s, the Chinese government has been undertaking major efforts in developing their countries economy by means of industrial policy. However, a more narrow approach to industrial policy has been pursued only since 2010, with the initiation of the 'Strategic Emerging Industries'...

Can historical institutions affect today's firm innovation? We analyze a historical experiment in 1902, when the foreign-run Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMC), known for its efficient and transparent governance, took over some of the notoriously corrupt Chinese Native Custom stations and...

This study focuses on the most recent development of Chinese overseas investment and construction and of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2019-23, from a project-oriented perspective. As a source we use data of the China Global Investment Tracker (CGIT) of the American Enterprise Institute....

This paper presents new micro-level data consisting of individual greenfield investment projects and mergers and acquisitions as a source for detailed analysis of service sector cross-border investment flows among the Asian Development Bank (ADB) regional members. The new transactional foreign...

Lack of access to electricity and modern cooking fuels constitutes energy poverty. Access to modern energy requires improved technologies and financing instruments and sources. The pro-poor public–private partnership model is one useful vehicle for raising capital to finance projects. Five...

Against the backdrop of growing momentum for regional cooperation and integration (RCI) in Asia, this paper examines the link between regional roads and Asian Development Bank (ADB) support between 1966 and 2008. The novel methodology used in this paper includes an Asia-wide definition of...

Of late, incorporating smallholder land, through partnerships with agribusiness firms that cultivate export crops has received some attention among scholars, policy- makers and non-government organizations (NGOs). Some see such partnerships as a means of raising smallholder incomes, and...

This paper provides an empirical assessment of race-to-the-bottom unilateralism. It suggests that decades of unilateral tariff cutting in Asia's emerging economies have been driven by a competition to attract FDI from Japan. Using spatial econometrics, I show that tariffs on parts and...

Free trade agreements (FTAs) have proliferated in East Asia in recent years. As of December 2008, eight bilateral FTAs and one plurilateral FTA involving Japan have entered into force; additional negotiations are ongoing with several more countries. The proliferation of FTAs in Japan and other...