Van der Eng (2025) provides a balanced overview of problems faced by Pakistan's economy today. First, as a development economist watching Pakistan since the mid-1980s, I agree with the structural reforms that are needed for Pakistan to sustain growth and reduce poverty in the coming decades. It is disappointing to find similar remarks repeatedly on the need for structural reforms but that elite capture is the underlying source of the difficulties for these reforms. In 2002 and 2003, I was involved in a project to prepare a long-term country strategy paper for the Japanese government with respect to official development assistance to Pakistan. Our final report pointed out the root cause of the less than expected performance of Pakistan as the weak and fragile monitoring capacity of citizens against the rent-seeking ruling elites (JICA, 2003). Pakistani economists cited by van der Eng (2025) vividly indicate that the problem still remains after more than two decades. Second, I would like to attempt to enrichen the analysis by van der Eng (2025) with a longer term horizon covering the pre-independence period. It is highly appropriate for van der Eng (2025) to pay attention to long-term perspectives, with an excellent summary on the industrialization during the 1960s under the military government of Ayub Khan. The industrialization during the 1960s contributed to the higher gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in Pakistan than in India in the 1980s. I once estimated GDP separately for areas currently in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, for the period c.1900–1947 (Kurosaki, 2017) and have recently revised those estimates (Kurosaki, 2024). Figure 1 shows that the high growth period during the 1960s was preceded by positive economic growth in Pakistan during the 1950s and the pre-independence period. Kurosaki (2017) shows that agricultural growth driven by institutional reforms just after independence and the canal irrigation development during the colonial period were the main factors of this early catching up. Areas currently in Pakistan indeed started from a much more unfavorable level than indicated by van der Eng (2025). Real per capita GDP in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, 1900/01–2000/01. Source: Kurosaki (2024). The original data sources are various government documents including from the British colonial period explained in detail in Kurosaki (2017). Note: The year on the X axis shows the fiscal year, so for example, “1961” means FY 1960/61. This has two policy implications. First, the achievement of Pakistan's economy has been more substantial than indicated by analyses focusing on more recent periods. In other words, the recent economic distress was indeed more damaging to the welfare of Pakistanis with a longer time horizon. Second, the agricultural sector has been important, and considering its current productivity level below the global frontier, the sector still has potential to contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction in Pakistan in the coming years.

This present paper discusses the main issues gripping Pakistan's economy. It takes a long‐term perspective to indicate that several economic issues are structural, going back at least 60 years. The present paper substantiates that Pakistan's current issues were aggravated during 2022, particularly by the damage caused by large scale floods. Government relief efforts increased budget deficits, public debt, and inflation. Crop failures dampened export earnings, increased the current account deficit and added urgency to the need to mobilize foreign exchange for foreign debt servicing during 2023. In 2024, resolving foreign debt servicing obligations is the touchstone for achieving macroeconomic stability and initiating reforms to change structural factors inhibiting Pakistan's economic growth.

External public debt exacerbation and macroeconomic destabilization in Laos are attributed to the subsequent complications of excessive foreign capital investments in the mining, power, and transport infrastructure sectors during the economic boom of the 2010s. This study examines the Lao economy from three perspectives: real sector growth, the characteristics of external fundraising, and the domestic financial system. Our findings suggest that the external debt issue still appears to be under control, real sector growth is expected to be strong in the medium term, and the less‐developed financial system has not realized its potential for fiscal financing and macroeconomic stability.

This paper investigates fiscal sustainability in Indonesia and draws comparisons with Malaysia and Thailand. The analysis encompasses an evaluation of fiscal rules, fiscal performance, and an assessment of fiscal sustainability across these three countries. Given that the Coronavirus Disease (COVID‐19) pandemic affected budget deficits in each country starting in 2020, the empirical assessment utilizes data from 2010 to 2019. Despite persistent fiscal deficits in each country, the results suggest that all three countries maintain fiscal sustainability. A more detailed analysis of the Indonesian case focuses on government revenue and expenditure. The discussion addresses challenges in these areas, aiming to identify feasible policy options for enhancing fiscal sustainability in Indonesia.

Park (2024) is an accessible overview of the current state of ASEAN, focusing on issues relating to trade integration and the role of regional and global value chains, with particular attention paid to the role of China. The original ASEAN-5 (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines) constituted the second wave of Asian reforming economies, following in the wake of Taiwan and South Korea. Eventually they were joined by oil exporter Brunei, and four lower income economies, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, forming the current ASEAN membership. The ASEAN economies have generally performed well relative to comparators globally. They have benefitted from technological and policy advances which have supported the rise of cross-border value chains and their proximity to China, which has emerged as a hub. Since 1995, there is clear evidence of convergence in per capita across the membership, though it unclear to what this reflects a simple catch-up process stimulated by domestic policy reforms, and to what extent it can be ascribed to membership in ASEAN per se. Whatever the impetus, Park documents a clear deepening of regional integration, much of it associated with regional supply chains linked to China. The electronics and automotive sectors have been prominent in this process. ASEAN will presumably remain important in automobiles and parts, through the shift to electric vehicles, which use fewer parts than conventional internal combustion vehicles, will imply a restructuring and possibly a diminution of cross-border exchange. Similarly, increasing industrial policy interventions by the United States, European Union, Japan, and others will affect the structure of the semiconductor industry and electronics more broadly. Moving forward, these regional supply chain networks will be affected by both China's policies and that country's role in the global economy. Park's (2024) concluding section describes some of the policy agenda that ASEAN faces, some of its successes, and some successes that have yet to be realized. Implicit is the basic challenge that the group has faced from the start: how far can a diverse organization go in addressing collective action problems with a model based on consensus with little formal structure? Park observes that “enforcing AEC commitments among the member state should be the region's top priority,” but does not address how that might be done. For example, can ASEAN form a coherent regional response to global warming, arguably the existential issue of our time? ASEAN has deliberately eschewed the legal-bureaucratic model of the European Union, but one wonders if at some point, more binding obligations and enforcement mechanisms are necessary. Is this model adequate for the future? If not, how does ASEAN build adequate institutions? Given the membership's diversity, what role is there for multi-speed commitments (and potentially enforcement allowances) or special and differential treatment? One way to think about this conundrum would be to separate out policy reforms that can be formulated and implemented at the national level and those that truly require regional commitment. My guess is that much of the policy reform agenda can be implemented without regional cooperation. What are the critical issues for which regional commitments are key? Even as it turns out that much of the agenda can be implemented unilaterally, that does not mean that ASEAN does not have a role to play. Demonstration effects matter. When Singapore began wide-ranging reforms in the late 1960s, it was after observing the impact of similar reforms in Taiwan and South Korea. Singapore's subsequent experience became a model for reforms undertaken in the other ASEAN-5 economies. Likewise, their experiences became the beacon for would-be reformers in the poorer countries of Indochina. Park mentions an array of ASEAN initiatives across a variety of policy issues. Even if these specific plans are not particularly efficacious, the simple exposure of national level policymakers and politicians to what their counterparts elsewhere are doing could have great impact. In that sense, parsing the relative impact of national level reforms and regional commitments may be both difficult, and ultimately, inconsequential.

This paper examines the macroeconomic and development policies to spur economic integration and growth in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It reviews how economic transformation and integration have fueled growth and job creation in the region. ASEAN's increased participation in global and regional value chains, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) as a regional hub, laid the solid foundation of regional production networks. However, with the changing role of the PRC in global value chains, the region needs to renew policy initiatives to address the development challenges and seize new growth opportunities with its single market goals. The analysis suggests the region requires strategic plans for infrastructure development, digitalization, and greater integration reinforced by the removal of trade barriers, increased labor mobility, and foreign direct investment mobilization. The region's successful future also depends on cooperative policy efforts around developing e‐government and digital value chains, strengthening micro‐, small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises and startups, and building smart cities.

Arimura and Sugino (2024) highlight the shock to fossil fuel markets caused by Russia's expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the Western-led international response. While fossil fuel prices generally soared, some countries including China and India benefited from relatively cheap Russian fuels. What happened in 2022 is certainly interesting. Data from the Energy Institute (2023) and BP (2022) suggest that Russian exports of oil, coal, and piped natural gas to the Asia-Pacific increased relative to the prior year, although exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) fell. Nevertheless, Russia continued to play a relatively modest role in supplying the Asia-Pacific's energy needs, especially for non-oil products. In 2022, Russian exports supplied about 10% of the oil consumed in the Asia-Pacific, 3% of the region's coal use, and 2% of its natural gas use (via a pipeline to China). Russia was only the fifth-largest supplier of LNG to the region, after Australia, Qatar, Malaysia, and the United States (US). Russia appears set to increasingly look East for its energy exports, with a new gas pipeline to China as part of the potential mix. Yet most Asia-Pacific countries are unlikely to wish to become overly dependent on Russian energy. The competitive nature of global energy markets, the economic and political benefits of diversification, and constraints on rapid ramp-up of Russian supply are instead likely to mean that Russia remains only one of a number of suppliers to the region. In 2023, fossil fuel prices were also already down from their 2022 levels, reducing the size of the price discounts available from Russia. Arimura and Sugino (2024) highlight a division in emission reduction ambition between developed and developing countries. Fortunately, this is one that has generally declined over time, with the Kyoto-era distinction between Annex B countries and others now behind us. One of the major achievements of the Paris Agreement era has been the net zero emission commitments announced by countries from Vietnam (by 2050) to India (2070). While energy security concerns spiked in 2022, climate ambition was not cast to the wayside. Indeed, the G20 declarations of 2022 and 2023 included strong climate statements. There has also been ongoing policy momentum, with Singapore announcing it will increase its carbon tax rate from 2024, for example. Taking the long view, the energy sector has generally been globalizing over time, with the ratio of energy trade (imports plus exports) to energy use rising for both the world and the Asia-Pacific (IEA, 2023). This has been aided by improvements in transport for products such as natural gas, among other factors. In recent developments, there have also been some moves toward cross-border integration. In 2023, China removed its restrictions on Australian coal, for example, while Singapore signed memoranda of understanding with several neighbors for cross-border power flows. Arimura and Sugino (2024) discuss the potential effect of the European Union (EU) carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). The underlying principle of a CBAM is to extend the price on negative externalities beyond only domestically produced commodities, although accurate implementation is challenging. In the Asia-Pacific, the EU CBAM has already had the positive effect of raising awareness of the energy transition and emission reduction imperatives. Efforts to reduce technological dependence on China loom large. As of 2022, China accounted for more than four-fifths of global solar cell production capacity and three-quarters of global battery cell production capacity, which are large shares (BNEF, 2022). The US Inflation Reduction Act and other efforts for diversification and decoupling may foster a broadening of the global production base for these technologies and a reduction in the vulnerability of supply chains. These efforts are not cost-free. Ongoing research on the effectiveness and implications of these efforts will be of high potential value. An imperative for the energy transition is to avoid investments that lock in future emissions and larger emission abatement costs over the long term. Arimura and Sugino (2024) are sanguine about natural gas, although note the large costs involved and that renewables are an alternative. Leaping to zero-emission energy sources would be much more compatible with climate goals. In some good news, the renewables share of electricity generation in the Asia-Pacific reached 14% in 2022 (Energy Institute, 2023).

Li et al. (2023) use a unique dataset collected from a large-scale survey conducted by the authors to study college students in China. The data provide many interesting and new descriptive statistics about college students, such as their technical certificates received, their internship experiences, and so on. Their study examines how different mechanisms, including human capital, social network, and signaling, help explain the returns to a college education. The human capital measures include grade point average (GPA), technical certificates, etc. Social networks are measured by Communist Party membership, participation in a student union, parental income and education. Students' skills possessed before enrolling in college such as the type of college enrolled in are assumed to be related to signaling. Li et al.'s main findings are: (i) human capital is the least useful in raising the starting salary; (ii) social networks are a strong predictor; and (iii) signaling matters. Li et al. suggest the need to reform the higher education system in China. A novel contribution of Li et al. (2023) is their investigation of the channels explaining the labor market effects of higher education. It complements similar studies that use data from other countries with more sophisticated causality analyses. For example, Dale and Krueger (2002) compare students who attended more selective colleges and those who had seemingly comparable ability but chose to attend less-selective ones and found that they obtained similar earnings in general. Black and Smith (2006) measure college quality with multiple proxies and find that existing studies understated the wage effect of college quality. Zhong (2011) finds that significant return gaps exist between high-ranked and low-ranked college in China. Li et al. (2023) use students' wages for their first job to measure the effect of human capital. A potential issue with the wage for the first job is the quality of the job match. It is known that job turnover rates for new college graduates are very high. For example, Takeshita et al. (2022) find that the turnover rate for new college graduates is around 20% within a year in Japan. In China, 34% of college graduates leave their first job within 1 year.1 Therefore, the first job may not reflect a person's true human capital due to the potential wage penalty of the mismatch (Sellami et al., 2017). This study is limited by the data, yet it would be helpful to discuss more of the implications regarding this issue. As Li et al. also acknowledge, the three mechanisms that determine wages are represented by variables that may overlap for the different mechanisms. For example, the involvement in a student union may be related to their non-cognitive abilities, such as openness, a part of human capital. For the signaling mechanism, the type of school that a student enrolled in has a signaling effect but may also represent the quantity and quality of learning. Although there is some ad hoc flavor in classifying those variables into three channels, the findings about those individual variables still provide useful information. Li et al. (2023) use standardized scores for college GPA. It is possible that the GPA in a top-ranked college is generally lower than in a low-ranked college. By pooling those scores together, the standardized scores may distort their relative magnitudes and their relationship with wages. Li et al. control for college fixed effects and the results still show that GPA is insignificant. Additional explanations could include that an incremental change of GPA does not influence wages, but a large change may do so, such as an increase from a low to a high GPA. Even within the same school, the comparability of GPA can still be problematic due to, for example, possible grade inflation in “soft” subjects. Whether GPA has any effect on earnings should have very important implications and thus warrant further investigation, for example, applying additional techniques to make them comparable and better reflect the true learning. In sum, Li et al. (2023) present new facts and findings about college students in China. They provide useful information for policy makers and will help further research.

Thailand has set itself the target of becoming a developed country by 2037. To achieve this goal, the nation must enhance its technological capabilities to produce higher-value-added products. Over the past two decades, Thailand has worked to improve its competitiveness through innovation by increasing research and development (R&D) investment. The country's gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) rose from 0.25% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2000 to 1.33% in 2020. This is driven by a significant increase in private sector R&D expenditure, which rose from 35% of total GERD in 2000 to 68% in 2020. However, firms' R&D output performance, as measured by granted patents, has seen slower progress (Rattanakhamfu & Itthiphatwong, 2019). Some have argued that this is due to weak university-industry linkages (UILs). In fact, 15 years ago, Brimble and Doner (2007) emphasized the role of university–industry linkages (UILs) in Thailand's technological competencies. Based on their analysis of four sectors—the automotive sector, the textile and garment sector, the agro-industry, and the electronics sector—Brimble and Doner concluded that Thai UILs played a very limited role in the country's economic development. They attributed weak UILs to low competition in the domestic market, inefficient structures and weak incentives in Thai universities, and the fragmentation of the Thai bureaucracy. Intarakumnerd and Jutarosaga (2023) contribute to the existing literature by examining the role of UILs in three sectors, namely the automotive sector, the electronics sector, and the pharmaceutical sector, based on their analysis of R&D and Innovation (RDI) Surveys between 2014 and 2018 and case studies. They find that despite significant development in the higher education system over the past two decades, Thailand's UILs remain weak. Most UIL activities focus on human resource development, particularly student internships and employee training. Research-related linkages are particularly weak. Among the sectors studied, the pharmaceutical and electronics industries appear to have stronger ties with universities than the automotive sector. In summary, Intarakumnerd and Jutarosaga offer valuable insights into the evolution of UILs in Thailand. To further enhance their contribution to the field, Intarakumnerd and Jutarosaga should consider the following revisions: First, by providing descriptive statistics on the firms in the sample so that readers can understand the firms' characteristics from the RDI survey, such as firm size and nationality. Although Intarakumnerd and Jutarosaga argue that there is a bias towards large firms, as all have asset sizes of more than THB 10 million, this is not the case when firm size is measured by sales. In fact, the proportion of small, medium, and large firms are relatively equal (each around 30%–39%) in all survey years. Second, by offering recommendations to improve not only student internships but also other underdeveloped UIL forms in Thailand, such as research partnerships, technology transfers, and industry-sponsored research.