Markets

Migration and the principle of free movement within the EU is one of the main issues in the debate over whether Britain should remain in the EU. Polls suggest that the public is very sympathetic to the idea that the...

After a rollercoaster week for Britain’s chancellor, his eighth budget has been approved. George Osborne will be breathing a sigh of relief. After proudly announcing his budget on March 16, things began to unravel just 48 hours later, thanks in...

South Korea is undergoing rapid demographic ageing. Only 551,000 Koreans or 2.9 percent of the population were aged 65 or above when the Korean War broke out in 1950. However, according to the United Nations World Population Prospects (UNWPP), 6.4...

Vietnam will hold its parliamentary election in May 2016. The three key positions of president, prime minister and chairperson of the National Assembly will all be elected. However, perhaps the most interesting aspect of this election is the emerging group...

The Hobbesian tones of Australia’s new Defence White Paper of 2016 (DWP16) have been noted already and most have come to see the concepts and capability proposals outlined in DWP16 as being reasonable and relatively balanced. There are those who...

New ADBI research (Aizawa and Helble, forthcoming) studies how overweight and obesity have become major threats to public health in Indonesia. The evidence shows that obesity, which was previously a problem among high-income groups in the country, has spread across...

Northeast China is under heavy pressure to reduce overcapacity. As the economy is rebalancing, so must “China’s Rustbelt.” But how? In the next five years, China's steel sector should reduce capacity by 100-150 million metric tons, while the coal mining...

While some observers claim China is heading for another property bubble, the big picture is more complex. There are signs of bubble formation in some cities and excessive inventory in others, but there is solid growth in many. A few...

The unthinkable is happening in Malaysian politics. Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad and his jailed former deputy Anwar Ibrahim have joined hands in a seemingly impossible alliance to unseat Prime Minister Najib Razak. Never before in Malaysian history have such...

It has been more than 20 years since former Australia Prime Minister Paul Keating declared that ‘no country is more important to Australia than Indonesia. If we fail to get this relationship right, and nurture and develop it, the whole...

An ill-conceived strategy undermined by mismanagement and bad fortune is increasing the risks that the UK votes to leave the EU in June.  Nearly everything that could go wrong has gone wrong for UK Prime Minister Cameron.    An ill-conceived strategy...

EM ended the week on a mixed note after posting strong post-FOMC gains. The bounce in risk seems likely to continue this week, with little on the horizon to derail it. Specific country risk remains in play, however, with heightened...

In the EM equity space, China (+5.1%), South Africa (+3.8%), and Turkey (+3.6%) have outperformed this week, while Thailand (-0.7%), Qatar (-0.7%), and Colombia (-0.3%) have underperformed.  To put this in better context, MSCI EM rose 3.3% this week while...

Not long ago, the Malaysian government thought that mastery of the internet was a path towards economic development. In February 1996, it launched the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), essentially a special economic zone, to entice high-technology corporations like Microsoft to...

Since West Papua’s integration into Indonesia in 1969 through a United Nations-sponsored people’s referendum — a process considered deeply flawed — the Papuans’ problems have haunted all Indonesian presidents. A critical juncture came after the downfall of the authoritarian regime...