This article examines whether foreign direct investment (FDI) has contributed to the changing structure of Indonesia's manufacturing exports. It uses industry-level data from 1990 to 2008, classified by factor intensity. Our analysis reveals that FDI promotes exports in most panel observations, especially exports from physical-capital-intensive (PCI), human-capital-intensive (HCI) and technology-intensive (TI) industries. Yet by applying a differentiated cross-section-effect model, we determine that the export-generating potential of FDI is stronger in PCI, HCI and TI industries than in natural-resource-intensive or unskilled-labour-intensive industries, in which Indonesia has a comparative advantage. We also assess the influence of other determinants of export performance – namely, private domestic capital investment, GDP growth and exchange rates. Our findings have implications for policymakers seeking to sustain Indonesia's export performance.

With frequent climate change related disaster shocks and a huge burden of refugees from neighbor country’s conflict, Bangladesh needs to formulate effective strategies to support its most prospective sectors for ensuring sustainable development. This paper aims at disentangling the process of economic growth in Bangladesh to identify some prospective accelerating sectors, which could achieve constant economic growth with proper policy support. Using a modification of traditional structural decomposition analysis (SDA), we identify some prospective growth sectors in the Bangladesh economy. We have found labor intensive manufacturing and some high value added service sectors as key sectors for growth in Bangladesh. We compare the existing economic structure of Bangladesh with five other Asian lower income developing countries (LIDCs) and found all other countries have mostly similar economic structure, except Vietnam. Our analysis showed Bangladesh is mainly dependent on the textiles and food sectors in manufacturing and construction, real estate and inland transport sectors in service, for its quick growth. Most importantly, we found some new manufacturing sectors, such as basic metal and machineries, NEC, and recycling sectors, are constantly growing over the last decade, using our technique. Proper policy support to these high potential emerging sectors could help Bangladesh achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of ensuring economic growth and sustainable development through promoting industrial diversification.

In Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), community-based health insurance (CBHI) is the only voluntary insurance scheme; it typically targets self-employed people, most of whom reside in rural areas and are dependent on agricultural activities for subsistence. However, until very recently, the enrollment rate has fallen short and failed to reach a large percentage of the target group. To promote the CBHI scheme and increase demand, some supporting components should be considered for inclusion together with the health infrastructure component. This paper provides empirical evidence that the benefit package components of hypothetical CBHI schemes have causal effects on enrollment probabilities. Furthermore, we examine the distribution of willingness to pay (WTP) in response to policy changes based on a sample of 5,800 observations. A randomized conjoint experiment is conducted in rural villages in Savannakhet Province, Lao PDR, to elicit stated preference data. Each respondent ranks three options—two hypothetical alternatives and the CBHI status quo scheme. The levels of seven attributes—insurance coverage for medical consultations, hospitalizations, traffic accidents, pharmaceuticals and transportation; premiums; and prepaid discounts—are randomly and simultaneously assigned to the two alternatives. The findings suggest that the average WTP is at least as large as 10.9% of the per capita income of those who live in rural areas, which is higher than the WTP for health insurance averaged across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the literature. The component of round-trip transportation insurance coverage has a significant effect on WTP distribution, particularly increasing the share of the highest bin. Therefore, the low CBHI scheme enrollment rate in Lao PDR does not necessarily imply low demand among the targeted population, as the finding from the WTP analysis illustrates potential demand for the CBHI scheme. Specifically, if transportation is addressed, enrollment is likely to significantly increase.

This study estimates the impact of irrigation on household sticky rice productivity in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) by applying propensity score matching (PSM) and the difference-in-differences (DID) method. This paper utilizes panel data from the Lao Expenditure and Consumption Survey (LECS) from 2003 to 2013. The results show that the average sales value and total production of sticky rice for irrigated households is greater than those for non-irrigated households by around 36 to 38% per season. Moreover, irrigated households experience improved sticky rice productivity of approximately 2.44 tons per hectare, per season, compared to non-irrigated households. In particular, compared to households with access to irrigation in one period of the surveys, households with access to irrigation in two periods of the surveys have nearly double the sticky rice productivity. Therefore, long-term access to irrigation is more effective for sticky rice productivity. However, we cannot find any evidence to support the impact of irrigation on household consumption. Some policy implications that can be derived from this research are that farmers should be intensively promoted to make the most use of irrigation, development of irrigation system is highly needed, and to ensure effectiveness of irrigation utilization local farmer involvement in monitoring procedure of irrigation is necessary.

A public transport system is the most efficient and equitable solution to the challenges of urban mobility and climate change. To improve public transport, technological innovations, policy interventions, and behavioral changes should all be applied appropriately; however, there is a lack of information about the demand for public transport services in developing countries. This paper aims to measure the degree of demand for public transport services by comparing various factors used as a case study in Kathmandu, one of the most congested urban areas in a developing country. We designed a choice-based conjoint experiment with five attributes: mode of transport, waiting time, one-way fare per km, commute time per km, and payment method. Our results indicate that 73% of the respondents are in favor of changing the current transport policy and wish for a shift to public transport, which means that most commuters are in favor of the proposed mode of transport, that is, MRT. On the other hand, the study reveals that respondents have a negative evaluation of motorbikes, one of the most popular modes of transport in Kathmandu. Our results, showing users’ unsatisfactory situation with motorbikes as a transport measure, provide transport planners guidance for addressing current public transport policies, indicating a massive rapid transit system with a low fare would be highly welcome in a typical congestion area like Kathmandu.

Solid waste management (SWM) is a severe environmental concern in many developing countries. The rapid pace of urban population growth and economic development worldwide has led to the increasing generation of municipal solid waste. A large amount of solid waste remains uncollected in metropolitan cities daily due to collection inefficiency. Kathmandu in Nepal also faces the same situation. Due to the lack of relevant studies, this study contributes to research based on quantitative evidence from households’ preference to think about the priority of making effective waste management policies. Prior studies have been less concerned with actual households’ preference or tendencies to improve current SWM (although most of them have pointed out existing waste problems such as the increasing presence of garbage and its composition). This study examines which factors have a causal effect on household decisions to choose improved SWM facilities in Kathmandu, Nepal by using a randomized conjoint experiment useful for effectively identifying respondents’ preference for SWM. Data were collected from 400 randomly selected households using paper questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. Since those households answered choice-card selection five times (and for two kinds of types), the observation number totaled 4000. Our results show that attributes such as monthly service charges, intermediate facilities, and temporary garbage collection spots have a significant effect on respondents’ preferences, while most households still tend to prefer current SWM services. The findings will aid SWM planners in developing and implementing an effective SWM policy that takes household preferences into account.