Publications

The 2021 CAREC Institute visiting fellow Teresita Cruz-del Rosario, Research Associate at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, studied the relationship between investments in health and education and regional cooperation and integration (RCI) outcomes through a comparative study of the performance of countries in the CAREC and ASEAN subregions.

Under the CAREC Think Tanks Network (CTTN) Research Grant Program, a team of researchers - Asif Razzaq, Fareeha Adil, Hui An – analyzed if the increased international trade and investment produce technology spillovers for host economies, and whether the PRC, as an emerging economy, has enough technical capabilities to produce technology spillovers for developing or underdeveloped host countries, and what is the role of technology gap to realize these spillovers.

Wang Yue and Yan Binyang from Renmin University analyzed trade efficiency and influencing factors in CAREC (using the stochastic frontier gravity model) and found that Central Asian countries have insufficient regional cooperation in trade.

The findings show that CAREC-WC (CAREC without the PRC) has a higher comparative advantage in labor- and resource-intensive manufacturing sectors, which explains the overdependence of these countries on few export industries.

In the paper, the GMS and CAREC economies are juxtaposed not only for having comparable states of development but also for their past socialist influence, reliance on state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and generally underdeveloped entrepreneurship.

Spanning from the People’s Republic of China through Central Asian countries along the Caspian Sea to Europe, the Trans-Caspian Corridor is an increasingly important channel for transportation and cross-border trade.

This Economic Brief provides data on demography, employment, GDP, and the external sector that show that without international support Afghanistan is likely to suffer severe shortages in all spheres.

The report presents results of the 2021 United Nations Global Survey on Digital and Sustainable Trade Facilitation for ten CAREC members. It presents a detailed analysis based on 58 trade facilitation measures which are classified into four groups ("General Trade Facilitation," "Digital Trade Facilitation," "Sustainable Trade Facilitation," and "Other Trade Facilitation") and further 11 subgroups covering both binding and non-binding WTO TFA measures and measures beyond the scope of WTO TFA+.

The new QEM writes that CAREC members are recovering relatively quickly from the deep recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. GDP levels were 2.8% higher in the first and 2.2% higher in the second quarter of 2021 at constant prices than in the corresponding periods of 2019.

This issue gives details of the 11th Governing Council meeting, 2021 Visiting Fellow Program finalists, also provides links to the Institute’s 2021 knowledge products and media coverage.

Our research on the impact of COVID-19 on micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Georgia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan looks at how MSMEs coped with the pandemic to explore lessons for policymakers in the CAREC region.