Was Europe’s rise to riches built on the blood, sweat, toil, and death of enslaved people? Europeans enslaved millions of men and women on the African continent during their colonisation of the Americas. Those who survived the transatlantic voyage were forced to labour on sugar, tobacco, cotton, and coffee plantations in the Caribbean and in […]
The economic sanctions that the US and the EU have imposed as response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine have transformed the Russian oligarchical model to resemble the close-knit family-run business holdings present for many decades in East Asia (Berner et al 2022, Ongena et al 2022, Evenett and Pisani 2022, Mahlstein et al. 2022, […]
Air pollution is one of the most pressing global challenges that affects lives worldwide. In many countries, severe air pollution is still one of the most crucial burdens of economic development (Jayachandran 2009, Greenstone and Hanna 2014, Chen et al. 2013, Greenstone and Jack 2015, Jack 2017, Ito and Zhang 2020, Khanna et al. 2021, […]
Rising inflation rates and an overheating economy as the US economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and early 2022 shattered the popular belief that central banks had vanquished inflationary pressures for good and raised concerns about the economy re-entering an environment much like that of the 1970s. Indeed, there are some eerie parallels. […]
Land represents the primary source of income and wealth in many agricultural economies. Land inequality is negatively correlated with long-run economic growth (Deininger and Squire 1998) and associated with political and social inequality (Frankema 2010). Moreover, because land is often transferred from one generation to the next, land inequality tends to persist over time. It […]
Due to the economic importance of coastal areas, the insurance industry can contribute significantly to their protection. Under current greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, mean sea level could rise by more than one meter by 2100, resulting in flooding of coastal areas that are critical to human life and the planet. These areas are trade and […]
As the region emerges from the pandemic, businesses should adopt more flexible approaches to developing talent for digital jobs, while workers must embrace lifelong learning of digital skills. As one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, Asia and the Pacific has witnessed rapid digitisation in recent years. While the trend was evident before the […]
Cloud-based services can provide solutions for banks and other financial institutions that serve the poor and people in remote areas. Without access to financial services, individuals and small businesses are unlikely to achieve prosperity and upward mobility. To reach those who remain unbanked and underserved, financial solutions must be delivered at low cost and be […]
How to finance action against climate change was a key topic at the United Nations COP27 Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh. For the Philippines, on the front lines of the global climate emergency, it is a make-or-break question. Living in one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change, people in the Philippines […]
Women need to be engaged in designing, implementing, and monitoring climate-smart agriculture. With a food crisis and climate change affecting millions of people in Asia and the Pacific, equipping female farmers with technology, support, and resources, is a win for women and food security overall. Women play critical roles in food systems as producers, processors, […]
