The long-term economic consequences of catastrophic disasters are poorly understood. This lacuna is surprising since the long-term effects may be much more important than the short-term emergency phase. In contrast, the policy literature is full of aspirational plans to “build back better”...

Three major global crises since 2008 have pushed up public and external debt ratios and associated risks across much of Asia and the Pacific. This is confirmed by debt ratio projections and evidence of widening pockets of vulnerability picked up by regional heat maps in this paper. By and large,...

Three major global crises since 2008 have pushed up public and external debt ratios and associated risks across much of Asia and the Pacific. This is confirmed by debt ratio projections and evidence of widening pockets of vulnerability picked up by regional heat maps in this paper. By and large,...

This paper calculates the decline in costs involving merchandise trade between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and India during the period 1980–2008. Drawing from the recent literature, a comprehensive measure of trade costs is derived from a theory-founded gravity model of...

Vertical gravity deploys as the dependent variable a newly developed indicator of production sharing and processing trade among country pairs. The intensity of this relationship among 73 countries between 1998 and 2005 is assessed in a standard fixed-effects panel setting, with particular focus...

We analyze the relationship between food security and trade by computing a bilateral import penetration index (BIPI), which gauges the degree to which a country depends on another or a small set of others for food imports. Food trade maps are then drawn by application of a force-directed...

The central objective of this paper is to empirically examine the issue of fiscal sustainability in developing Asia. To do so, we first diagnose the region's public finances by analyzing the evolution of key fiscal indicators over time and across subregions. We then estimate fiscal policy...

Since the early 1990s, India has embarked on economic reforms that have progressively opened up the country to international trade. This paper analyzes the effects of reform on India's trading structure from 1990 to 2006. It computes comparative advantage indicators on the basis of disaggregated...

The central objective of this paper is to empirically examine the issue of fiscal sustainability in developing Asia. To do so, we first diagnose the region’s public finances by analyzing the evolution of key fiscal indicators over time and across subregions. We then estimate fiscal policy...