Income growth in rural areas is a considerable challenge to further poverty reduction and economic development. Using a survey of rural Bhutanese households, we investigate the impacts of a vocational skills training programme that was intended to diversify incomes outside agriculture. We find that the programme had limited positive impacts along various economic and psychosocial dimensions, but ...

This article analyzes five significant institutional variables related to membership and control of institutions, using comparative case studies of Asia's past regional financial projects from the 1950s through the 1990s. The five variables are: (i) countries included in or excluded from membership, (ii) membership tiers, (iii) institutional decision-making process, (iv) executive positions at ...

This article examines real exchange rate (RER) misalignment in Thailand in the lead-up to the 1997–1998 currency crisis. The methodology involves estimating the long-run equilibrium RER based on the internal and external balance approach. RER misalignment is measured by comparing the actual RER with the estimated long-run equilibrium RER. The results suggest that there was a persistent RER overvaluation ...

Understanding the determinants of capital inflows is essential to designing an effective policy framework to manage volatile capital flows and their disruptive potential. This paper aims to identify factors that explain the size and volatility of various types of capital flows to developing Asia, vis-à-vis other emerging market economies. The estimates for a panel dataset show that per capita income ...

This paper examines the extent to which Pakistan's growth has been, or is likely to be, constrained by its balance of payments. Evidence presented suggests that Pakistan's maximum growth rate consistent with equilibrium on the basic balance is approximately 5% per annum. This is below the long-term target GDP growth rate of 7–8% per annum. This balance-of-payments constrained growth approach provides ...

This paper will examine the level of services trade integration in Asia in comparison with Europe and North America. The main empirical findings of this paper are that: (i) the regional bias of services trade in Asia is as high as or higher than in Europe and North America; (ii) in Asia, the regional bias of services trade is higher than that of goods trade, which is in sharp contrast to Europe and ...

This study examines the impact of capital controls using monthly information to construct higher-frequency, quarterly indexes for Malaysia and Thailand over the period 2000–2010 in a Vector Auto-Regression (VAR) model. The results show that effectiveness of a capital control policy is not identical between Malaysia and Thailand. This could result from country-specific factors, the form of capital ...

The paper proposes a method that refer toa s the 'multiple mirror technique'. By conducting a cross-check of the results of various bilateral mirror analyses, we are able to identify the magnitude of the misclassification committed on the side of the test country. By applying the multiple mirror technique, the paper focuses specifically on the inaccuracy of trade statistics caused by two types of ...

Regionalism in East Asia by Richard Pomfret is a relatively short and readable book, but it provides readers with useful insights on the past, current and future of East Asian regionalism to outline the prospects of future regionalism. While this is not a book on contemporary economic history of Asia, as he notes, the historical perspective is critical to analysing relatively 'recent' phenomena of ...

This article analyses business cycle co-movement between Australia and 10 major economies in the East-Asian region by using two measures: concordance indices and correlation coefficients. The results from the concordance index suggest that Australia's business cycle is becoming increasingly synchronised with those in East Asia, particularly with China and Japan. The correlation coefficients of gross ...