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on South East Asia |
| By: | Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) |
| Abstract: | ASEAN faces persistent challenges in managing ship waste despite established international obligations under MARPOL and supporting regional frameworks, including the ASEAN Framework of Action on Marine Debris and the Regional Action Plan for Combating Marine Debris. Without harmonised and effective ship waste management procedures, ASEAN risks becoming a weak link in global maritime compliance, potentially undermining regional integration efforts and increasing the risk of illegal waste discharges. ASEAN’s Regional Strategy on Ship Waste Management provides a comprehensive framework for harmonising ship waste management across the region. However, implementation across ASEAN Member States remains uneven. Key constraints include inadequate port reception facilities (PRFs), inconsistent implementation, limited performance assessment, weak compliance and enforcement, and insufficient use of monitoring data to evaluate policy effectiveness. This policy brief argues that ASEAN’s primary challenge lies not in the absence of policy, but in ensuring its consistent and effective implementation across the region. Addressing this challenge requires a co-ordinated regional approach built around four priorities: establishing an outcome-based environmental monitoring framework, prioritising strategic investment in PRFs, strengthening implementation accountability through an ASEAN Ship Waste Performance Assessment Framework, and institutionalising data-driven compliance and enforcement. Together, these measures will improve MARPOL compliance, reduce illegal ship waste discharges, strengthen evidence-based policymaking, and enhance ASEAN’s competitiveness as a sustainable maritime region. Latest Articles |
| Date: | 2026–08–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:era:wpaper:pb-2026-06 |
| By: | Ngov, Meng Yu; Vézina, Pierre-Louis; Tran, Trang Thu; Nayyar, Gaurav |
| Abstract: | This paper documents how foreign firms, inputs, and subsidies have shaped the development of Viet Nam’s solar panel industry. The analysis uses firmto-firm transaction data from Panjiva as well as firm-level data from the Viet Nam’s Enterprise Survey to trace solar panel value chains. It uncovers three key findings. First, parts and components from subsidizing countries are 30 percent cheaper than alternatives. Those from China, which provides the majority of solar inputs to Vietnamese producers, are cheapest. Foreign green subsidies may thus spill over across countries via value chains. Second, Chinese FDI firms dominate Viet Nam’s solar industry, accounting for 75% of exports and 50 percent of jobs, and they export solar panels that are 38 percent cheaper than those of other producers in Viet Nam. Third, local firms supplying parts and components to these Chinese FDI firms experience positive productivity gains. The findings show how Viet Nam’s solar boom emerged through deep integration into China’s subsidized supply chains. |
| Date: | 2026–10–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11478 |
| By: | Artuc, Erhan; Constantinescu Neagu, Ileana Cristina; Taglioni, Daria |
| Abstract: | How can middle-income economies convert trade openness and productivity-enhancing reforms into higher real income and welfare? This paper develops a quantitative trade model with input-output linkages and labor market frictions to assess the impact of trade and productivity reforms on real income, wages, trade, and production. Thailand and ASEAN provide a useful case because the region spans economies with very different approaches to growth: some deeply embedded in Asian manufacturing value chains, others focused on commodities, export-led industrializers, and countries pursuing more selective integration. This variation allows assessing when openness yields large welfare gains, when productivity reforms matter more, and when the two are complementary. The results show that openness gains depend on domestic capabilities, while productivity gains depend on access to inputs and markets. The policy implication is a twin agenda: reduce trade frictions in connectivity, customs, logistics, standards, certification, and regulatory recognition, while strengthening firm productivity, supplier capabilities, and manufacturing-related services in high-growth sectors and global value chains. |
| Date: | 2026–09–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11440 |
| By: | Mahirah Mahusin (Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)); Hilmy Priliadi (Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)); Samsu Sempena |
| Abstract: | Cryptography is embedded in a wide range of internationally traded information and communication technology (ICT) products, including smartphones, laptops, and software applications, even when encryption is not their primary function. As a result, national cryptography laws and controls may increasingly affect a broad range of commercial ICT products. This policy brief examines the intersection of cryptography-related regulations in ASEAN and provisions in free trade agreements (FTAs) and digital economy agreements (DEAs). It shows that licensing requirements, import and export controls, and conformity assessment procedures, when applied too broadly to ICT products that use cryptography, can raise compliance costs and unintentionally restrict trade. The brief reviews how recent FTAs and DEAs address ICT products that use cryptography, highlighting common prohibitions on mandatory disclosure of encryption information, forced localisation, and prescribed algorithms, alongside clear carve-outs for regulatory and judicial access. Based on these developments, the brief offers policy considerations for ASEAN Member States (AMS) in assessing whether and how to include provisions on ICT products that use cryptography in the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework. Latest Articles |
| Date: | 2026–07–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:era:wpaper:pb-2026-04 |
| By: | Romora Edward Sitorus; Nobuhiro Aizawa (Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)); Samsu Sempena |
| Abstract: | Cyber incidents across Southeast Asia are causing financial losses that are growing in scale and increasingly threaten entire systems, not just individual firms. Cross-border supply chains and shared service providers compound the risk because, when many firms rely on the same providers, a single incident can affect them all simultaneously, producing losses too large for any one firm to absorb. Yet cyber insurance penetration across ASEAN remains negligible, owing to constraints on both the demand and supply sides of the market. On the demand side, fragmented coverage standards, low awareness, and gaps between perceived and actual protection prevent informed decisionmaking. On the supply side, scarce regional loss data and divergent regulatory frameworks limit insurers’ confidence in pricing coverage. Importantly, cyber insurance complements rather than substitutes for cybersecurity investment. It finances recovery after an incident and, by conditioning coverage on minimum security controls, encourages stronger defences from the outset. Because ASEAN’s economies differ widely in digital maturity, governments should adopt a gradual approach. They can advance convergence on coverage standards, establish a shared platform for recording cyber incidents, and develop a regional mechanism to cover large-scale events that exceed any single country’s capacity. Latest Articles |
| Date: | 2026–07–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:era:wpaper:pb-2026-05 |
| By: | Pisch, Frank; Carattini, Stefano; Huang, Hanwei; Singh, Tejendra Pratap |
| Abstract: | Although the environmental impact of trade has been a long-standing concern, there is still scant evidence on the channels through which international market access affects pollution. We exploit the unique episode of China’s world market integration in the early 2000s to provide direct empirical evidence on three such mechanisms, corresponding to each pollution scope: direct pollution at firms’ locations (scope-1), indirect pollution from energy generation (scope-2), and indirect pollution from the supply chain (scope-3). We combine granular satellite data on air pollution with detailed information on manufacturing firms and coal power plants, and leverage exogenous foreign demand shocks for identification. Three main findings emerge: exporting firms reduce local pollution; pollution levels around coal power plants rise due to regional export shocks; and upstream suppliers reduce pollution in the face of export demand shocks to downstream firms. Our findings point to China’s reliance on coal power plants to fuel its export-driven growth as one of the main drivers of the rise in pollution. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dar:wpaper:162611 |
| By: | Pym Manopimoke; Nuwat Nookhwun; Tanaporn Sriklay; Tanisa Tawichsri |
| Abstract: | In an open emerging market economy, firm inflation expectations are not simply noisy survey responses; instead, they are a state-dependent transmission channel through which global shocks affect firm behavior. Using monthly firm-level survey data from Thailand between 2012 and 2023, we show that short-term expected inflation—though biased and highly dispersed— responds systematically to macroeconomic conditions, particularly global inflation and oil prices. This response is state dependent, with firms exhibiting more attention during periods of higher inflation and stronger economic growth. Moreover, salient global shocks such as negative oil supply news shocks can lead to persistent and upward revisions in inflation expectations, particularly when inflation is high, while domestic shocks such as the minimum wage hike in Thailand during 2012–2013 only had modest and short-lived effects. Finally, using oil supply news shocks as an instrument, we find strong evidence of state-dependence for the influence of firms’ inflation expectations on business decisions. Price-setting and employment decisions are only significant in higher inflation episodes, while higher expected inflation drags firms’ investment, particularly during periods of lower growth. |
| Keywords: | Firm inflation expectations; Emerging markets; Oil shocks; Minimum wage; Price-setting; Investment; Employment; State-dependence |
| JEL: | E31 D84 O11 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pui:dpaper:265 |
| By: | Barattieri, Alessandro; Mattoo, Aaditya |
| Abstract: | China’s growing dominance in manufacturing exports is attracting widespread attention. However, existing explanations of China’s export exceptionalism and its consequences for developing countries suffer from three shortcomings. First, attributing China’s large and increasing share in manufacturing exports primarily to its industrial policy obscures more fundamental factors: the scale of its economy, the diversity of its provincial endowments, and the pace of its automation. Second, focusing on the low-skilled export dimension of China’s economic expansion overlooks its positive impact on growth and its heterogeneous effects on structural transformation in developing countries. Finally, blaming foreign industrial policies distracts attention from the often more damaging trade and investment restrictions imposed by developing countries themselves, many of which could be reformed unilaterally. |
| Date: | 2026–09–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11470 |
| By: | Bird, Julia; Venables, Anthony; Dehe, Henry; Rubinyi, Steven Louis; Wibisana, Putu Sanjiwacika; Bui, Quang Anh Phan |
| Abstract: | Thu Duc, a rapidly urbanizing area of Ho Chi Minh City, is well located and heavily invested in policy ambition, yet its output and density remain far below what its position in the metropolitan economy would support. Much of it is also flood exposed. This paper asks how much of that shortfall flood risk explains, and what coordinated investment could recover. A Spatial Computable General Equilibrium model of the Greater Ho Chi Minh City Metropolitan Area, covering 116 cells across Ho Chi Minh City and neighboring provinces, evaluates interventions to 2040. The model endogenizes firm location, household residence and commuting, land use intensity, and agglomeration externalities, recovering cell-level productivity and amenity parameters by structural calibration against observed employment and residential distributions. Its methodological contribution is to integrate spatially explicit flood exposure as a determinant of those fundamentals, so flood risk is evaluated within the same general equilibrium framework as transport and land use, and local gains can be separated into net new metropolitan output and activity reallocated from elsewhere. Thu Duc's calibrated productivity is roughly one-third of the metropolitan average, implying that frontier output is more than five times the business-as-usual level. Flood mitigation raises sectoral total factor productivity by 1 2 to 21 percent and residential amenity by 10 to 13 percent, and it broadens the sectoral employment base more than the other interventions examined. A cumulative package of innovation zones, flood mitigation, and transport reaches about 31 percent of that frontier, raising output roughly two-thirds above business as usual, of which some 56 percent is net new output for the metropolis. |
| Date: | 2026–09–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11444 |
| By: | Sang-Hyop Lee (University of Hawai`i at Mānoa); Hyun Kyung Kim (Chungbuk National University); Huixia Wang (Hunan University); Donghyun Park (The South East Asian Central Banks (SEACEN) Research and Training Centre) |
| Abstract: | We estimate expected financial resources in old age—including public transfers, family transfers, accumulated assets, and post-retirement labor income—and compare them with target consumption needs. The sample is divided into a reference group (individuals at or beyond retirement age) and a target group (pre-retirement individuals). Two retirement scenarios are considered: (i) a statutory retirement age of 62 for both men and women, and (ii) effective retirement ages of 66 for men and 65 for women. Results are presented by gender and place of residence. We find substantial heterogeneity in financial preparedness, with women facing significantly larger shortfalls than men. Continued work and family transfers remain critical pillars of old-age support, highlighting the transitional nature of the Republic of Korea’s welfare regime. |
| Keywords: | population aging;financial preparedness;retirement;pensions;Republic of Korea |
| JEL: | J14 H55 D91 J26 |
| Date: | 2026–09–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbewp:023633 |
| By: | Khan, Nazmus Sadat |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between economic growth and employment in Bangladesh, with a comparative perspective involving six other Asian countries. It first tests the validity of Okun’s law for Bangladesh and the selected countries using three distinct autoregressive distributed lag model specifications: a dynamic difference model, a gap model based on the Hodrick-Prescott filter, and a gap model based on the Baxter-King filter. The analysis then estimates the employment elasticity of economic growth for Bangladesh across three periods—2003–10, 2010–17, and 2017–24—while also exploring sectoral variations in employment elasticity within these subperiods. The results reveal that the evidence supporting Okun’s law in Bangladesh is weaker than in the other countries. Furthermore, the sectoral analysis shows substantial shifts in the employment elasticity of economic growth over time: the agriculture sector experienced an increase in the employment elasticity of economic growth from 0.29 in 2003–10 to 0.98 in 2016–24, while the industry sector’s elasticity declined from 0.84 to -0.04 over the same period. The service sector also saw a reduction. A more granular examination of subcategories within the industry and service sectors highlights that accommodation and food services and transportation and storage have demonstrated the strongest employment elasticity, whereas the employment elasticity for the manufacturing sector turned negative, performing the worst among the sectors analyzed. These findings carry significant policy implications, underscoring the importance of prioritizing employment-enhancing growth strategies, identifying and promoting sectors with high job creation potential, and focusing on improving job quality rather than pursuing growt h-driven employment policies. |
| Date: | 2026–09–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:111458 |
| By: | Fukuzawa, Daisuke; Islamaj, Ergys; Le, Duong Trung; Mattoo, Aaditya; Samano Penaloza, Agustin |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses how China’s rapid expansion has affected growth in other developing economies through the trade channel. The empirical strategy is a shift-share design that exploits pre-determined variation across countries in the exposure of their exports to China’s import demand and export supply in global markets, well before China became a dominant trader. The paper shows that China’s rising demand for commodities and intermediate goods has had a favorable impact on other developing countries’ growth, while intensified competition from its manufacturing exports has had an adverse effect. The former effect is stronger and therefore the net effect has been positive for most countries. The positive impact is, however, becoming weaker as China’s growth slows down, and developing countries’ longer term growth may also be influenced by the changes in their economic structures induced by China’s trade expansion. |
| Date: | 2026–09–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11467 |
| By: | Shi, Yingxin; Shi, Xinyu |
| Abstract: | We exploit the staggered, province-level rollout of China's Fully Digitalized Electronic Invoice (the Shu-Dian- Piao, or FDEI) between late 2021 and 2023 to identify how invoice digitalization affects firms' formal compliance costs and tax compliance, and-most importantly-how these effects are distributed across parties with different bargaining power. Using firms in regions that never opened an FDEI issuance pilot within the window as controls and the Callaway and Sant'Anna (2021) estimator, which is robust to heterogeneous treatment timing, we document three findings. First, on average, firms' administrative- expense ratio rises by about 0.26 percentage points after treatment, with no detectable pre-trend; audit fees, financial-expense ratios, and top-five supplier/customer shares do not change significantly. Second, the increase is highly concentrated: it is about 0.33 percentage points for non-state-owned firms and 0.40 percentage points for small firms, while it is insignificant for state-owned and large firms. Third, tax compliance, measured by book-tax differences, the Desai-Dharmapala residual, and effective tax rates, does not improve on average or in any ownership/size subgroup. The claim robustly supported by the data is therefore the asymmetric incidence of formal compliance costs toward weaker market participants-not the stronger claim that compliance improvement is "decoupled" from compliance costs. The evidence should be read as short-run and conservative, given the concentration of treatment in 2023, the short post-period, and nationwide spillovers from the separately rolled-out receipt side. |
| Keywords: | electronic invoice, tax administration, compliance cost, incidence, staggered difference-in differences, China |
| JEL: | H26 H32 K34 O17 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:344060 |