Asian Development Review

Public capacity complements urban density because externalities abound in cities and urban scale makes it possible to share infrastructure that needs to be managed. Yet, urban governments face limitations that are not experienced by private sector entities. A city cannot just stop policing if it decides it is bad at policing. Typically, public compensation and personnel policies are highly regulated either by law or by union contracts. City governments do, however, have one great advantage over private entities: a greater ability to learn from their peers. City governments do similar things throughout the world, while companies frequently specialize. Private companies have strong incentives to hide the trade secrets that make them more productive, cities do not. As individual cities do not have an incentive to make it easier for other governments to learn from them, multinational entities like the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank could enable that learning. Since climate-change-related crises are relatively rare events, city-to-city learning seems particularly important for adapting to climate change.

This paper exploits the staggered roll-out of a landmark Air Quality Monitoring Program in the People’s Republic of China to study the migration response to pollution information disclosure and labor market outcomes. Using two nationally representative individual-level datasets, we show that information mitigates the negative pollution–settlement relationship, contrary to intuition. These results are attributable to (i) information effects—that is, increased life satisfaction from information accessibility and governance efforts; and (ii) health effects—including improved health conditions and reduced hospital costs. Further evidence suggests that income growth is more pronounced for individuals with better internet or mobile device access and in regions with stronger economic development and health-care resources. We also rule out alternative explanations related to labor supply and selection issues. Our findings highlight the benefits of improving public access to pollution information in developing economies where information blockades are widespread.

In 2014, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) strengthened local government responsibilities for environmental protection by amending the Environmental Protection Law and strengthening its associated performance management system. Considering the limitations and inefficiencies of the PRC’s performance management system, this study explores how local elites’ traits influence environmental performance, both before and after the amendment to the Environmental Protection Law. The study found that the effects of local elites’ characteristics on environmental performance changed after the amendment of the Environmental Protection Law, particularly with regard to the administrative leader’s (i) birth year and (ii) year of joining the Chinese Communist Party. Additionally, there were discrepancies in the results between administrative leaders and party secretaries, highlighting the distinctions in their respective roles. This study emphasizes the importance of appointing administrative leaders to enhance environmental performance at the local level in the PRC.

This study investigates the impact of green open spaces in reducing the probability of flooding and open waste burning in urban areas in Indonesia’s three largest metropolitan cities: Surabaya, Jakarta, and Medan. This study employs urban village microdata from the 2014 and 2018 Village Potential Census. First, we construct the dataset into a difference-in-differences setup. The urban villages that initially did not have any green open spaces in 2014 and then had them in 2018 were assigned as the treatment group, and those without any green open spaces in both periods were the comparison group. Then, we estimated the impact of urban green spaces on the probability of flooding and open waste burning. The results indicate that the likelihood of flooding and open waste burning had decreased in treated areas by 2018.

This paper studies participation by developing Asian economies in global value chains (GVCs). We use an input–output framework to measure the impacts that GVCs of final manufactured products have on jobs and income. We combine new occupations data with multiregional input–output tables to examine 15 developing Asian economies from 2000 to 2018. Using an accounting framework, developing Asian economies are compared to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development economies. Our findings show that various developing Asian economies—including Bangladesh, Cambodia, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Viet Nam—achieved rapid expansions in the scale of their respective production activities. Further, several economies—including the PRC, Thailand, and Viet Nam—increased productivity in knowledge-intensive activities, suggesting functional upgrading within GVCs.

Understanding how e-commerce platforms are affecting the small, informal firms that sell on them is a question of growing importance to researchers and policymakers in developing countries. This paper examines this question using data from surveys of firms selling on two e-commerce platforms in South Asia. The businesses selling on these platforms range widely in terms of size, degree of formalization, and other characteristics. Their main reason for joining the platforms is to access more customers. After joining, many sellers report (i) an expansion of their business, (ii) an increase in their incentive to formal registration, and (iii) increased visibility to tax authorities. Other less-widespread channels of impact include (i) the adoption of new or improved business practices and technologies, (ii) better access to finance, and (iii) greater flexibility in balancing home and work life. These reported impacts do not vary significantly by firm size or registration status, suggesting that the greater market access brought about by (selectively) joining e-commerce platforms benefits equally large and small (informal) firms. Given size and age, firms selling on the platform for a longer period are more likely to experience these impacts, suggesting that firms learn how to use the platform more effectively over time. Finally, firms on these platforms—even the micro and small ones, which tend to be informal—are from a select group, as they are owned and managed by individuals who are more educated and younger than the owners and managers of more typical firms in this setting.

The improved food security in Asia that has facilitated the region’s development progress depends on nitrogenous fertilizers. Rising prices and shortages of imported fertilizer have prompted countries to explore alternative sources of crop nitrogen, including diversification with legumes. We evaluate an intervention in Nepal that promoted mungbean adoption. Our doubly robust impact evaluation approach accounts for nonrandom patterns of adoption related to livestock rearing, participation in agricultural cooperatives and training, and greater irrigated land use. Adopters growing mungbean for the 2-year study period showed an average increase of 20 kilograms (kg) in their annual consumption of mungbean-based foods, applied almost 40kg per hectare (ha) less fertilizers to their rice crops, and obtained an additional 280kg in rice yield per ha. Hence, agricultural innovations that use legumes such as mungbean can help promote sustainable intensification of cereal-based production systems, while enhancing food security and reducing balance-of-payments issues for the countries dependent on fertilizer imports.

This paper measures the impact of a micronutrient training among women farmers with young children on the demand for zinc-enhanced varieties. We conducted a randomized control trial by providing micronutrient training in randomly selected villages in May–June 2017. These farmers were also given information on the biofortification of rice with zinc. One week after the training, we conducted a phone-based bidding for high-zinc rice seeds among trainees and their counterparts in control villages. More than 70% of the treated female farmers participated in the bidding for high-zinc rice seed, but only 23% of the women in the control group participated in the bidding. Female farmers who self-reported that they had input into most or all decisions on the use of income generated from rice bid a higher price than other female farmers. The results suggest the effectiveness of the micronutrient training, at least in a short period immediately after the training.

The diffusion and adoption of the internet are necessary for farmers’ economic development, including in Indonesia where agriculture continues to employ most of the labor force. However, Indonesian farmers’ terms of trade for food crops remain low. This study examines the association between internet use in agriculture and farm earnings in Indonesia. We analyze data on the agriculture sector and three subsectors (food crops, horticulture, and livestock) from the August 2022 Indonesia National Labor Force Survey. We apply the Heckman selection model with maximum likelihood estimation to the data. We find that self-employed farmers who use the internet have 29.6% more farm earnings than those who do not. This association varies across subsectors, with internet use in the food crops and livestock subsectors associated with the lowest and highest percentage increases in farm earnings, respectively. Moreover, internet infrastructure development is low in eastern Indonesia. Therefore, addressing this issue may increase internet use and help raise farm earnings in that part of the country.

As countries grapple with the aftermath of climate-related disasters, the disruptions they inflict on domestic consumption ripple through the fabric of income and price level shocks. The income shock emanates from the adverse effects of such disasters on economic agents, leading to both wage and asset income losses. On the other hand, the destruction of productive capacity and the disruption of supply chains by climatic disasters generate a price level shock. To delve deeper into these channels, this paper builds a novel climate economy model using nonlinear model predictive control. Moreover, using time-series analysis for Bangladesh, the study uncovers compelling evidence of the existence of income and price channels through which climatic disasters impact consumption where the price effect has appeared stronger than the income effect. The findings suggest that policymakers should simultaneously prioritize income-generating and price-supporting initiatives after climate-related disasters to achieve a rapid and sustainable consumption recovery to match or surpass the predisaster level.

The failure of newly independent Central Asian countries to diversify exports after the Soviet Union’s collapse is attributed to high trade costs, either because these countries are landlocked or due to border delays and regulatory obstacles. This paper estimates the impact of the high costs of exporting in Central Asia using a structural gravity model with trade cost variables from the trade facilitation indicators of the Corridor Performance Measurement and Monitoring dataset. The results demonstrate that uncertainty in the time to export has a strong negative impact on exports of goods in five Central Asian countries. Moreover, time-sensitive, perishable agricultural products are confirmed to be strongly impacted by uncertainty in export time, while textile and apparel commodities are highly sensitive, relative to other commodities, to high costs to export. The findings suggest that policies aimed not only at reducing time and costs but also at creating an enabling and predictable trading environment could significantly boost cross-border trade, promote export diversification, and foster economic growth in the region.

This study examines the effects of at-the-border and behind-the-border measures on the intraregional perishable goods trade in the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation region by combining trade facilitation indicators at the bilateral product level with an extensive dataset of nontariff measures. By utilizing a Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimation technique in a gravity model, this study shows no empirical evidence that the time and cost associated with clearing perishable products at border crossing points harm intraregional trade. However, behind-the-border measures assume a more significant role in facilitating or impeding the perishable goods trade. Therefore, our findings highlight the importance of enacting structural reforms in trade facilitation—such as enhancing the capabilities and capacities of sanitary and phytosanitary laboratories, aligning regulations with international standards, simplifying and harmonizing documentary requirements, streamlining border processes, and promoting collaboration among customs and other relevant agencies involved in the trade of perishable goods.

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, mobility restrictions had a significant impact on trade times and costs at the borders, particularly in landlocked developing countries. This paper examines the effect of COVID-19 mobility measures on the time required for cargo to clear the borders, using monthly bilateral time measures at the border crossing points (BCPs) of Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation countries. An estimation of impulse response functions reveals that the time for inbound cargo to clear the border increased by up to 40% when the most stringent mobility restrictions were implemented. However, the results indicate that the time for outbound cargo was not significantly affected. Furthermore, our findings demonstrate the cross-border spillover effect of a trading partner’s mobility measures. Both inbound and outbound times at own-BCPs increased when a trading partner implemented tightened mobility restrictions. These findings emphasize the need for enhanced policy coordination and monitoring among trade partners during emergencies, providing valuable insights for border management strategies.