The UN resolution on global happiness: An Asian perspective
YAN ISLAM | Bhutan, a small, land-locked Asian country, became one of the first, if not the first, in the world to dethrone… Read More
Yan Islam
Bangladesh at 50: South Asia’s ‘standout star’?
YAN ISLAM | Early this year, Bangladesh celebrated its 50th year as an independent nation. ‘The country was born’, writes Bloomberg columnist Mihir… Read More
Coping with COVID-19: The perilous case of vaccine inequality
YAN ISLAM | The Lancet Commission has urged the global community that rapid vaccination on a global scale is essential in tempering and, finally,… Read More
Why Asian nations should no longer play the World Bank’s Doing Business ranking game
YAN ISLAM | The Doing Business Report (henceforth DBR) is a celebrated flagship publication of the World Bank. DBR grew out of a… Read More
India in the wake of a pandemic-driven recession: Massive loss, modest response?
YAN ISLAM | India’s national statistical agency announced on August 31 that quarterly (April to June, 2020) GDP declined by a massive 23.9… Read More
Will Indonesia succumb to a secular growth slow-down? If so, does it matter?
YAN ISLAM | In an iconoclastic paper, Lant Pritchett and Larry Summers (2015), question the standard view that emerging economies in the Asian… Read More
How hard will the Indonesian economy be hit by the current pandemic?
YAN ISLAM | Indonesia rose from the ruins of the 1997-1998 financial crisis in a commendable fashion. Economic recovery from a historically unprecedented… Read More
How the great Indian lockdown became the great Indian ‘policy disaster’
What happened? How did the great Indian lockdown fail to produce the expected outcomes? It appears that, instead of ‘flattening’ the pandemic curve, the lockdown strategy merely delayed it for a while. Read More
COVID-19 and developing countries: grim predictions of a significant increase in global poverty threaten the attainment of the SDGs
COVID-19 and developing countries: grim predictions of a significant increase in global poverty threaten the attainment of the SDGs Read More
The economic consequences of COVID-19: For the first time in 60 years, growth is expected to be zero in the Asian region
The Asian region, which includes some of the most dynamic economies in the world and accounts for more than 60% of the global population, is facing zero growth for the first time in 60 years. The region has endured the oil crisis and stock market crash in the early 1970s, the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 as well as the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 without suffering a region-wide recession, although a number of countries experienced negative growth. Read More
