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"The book documents the evolution of Asia's infrastructure over the past half-century and reviews existing literature on the role of infrastructure investment in supporting growth and social development. It highlights the implications of tax financing and mass transit investments on land and property values and infrastructure financing. It then examines Asia's current practices and new solutions that can help meet the infrastructure gap. It discusses the role of institutions, how innovation can foster energy infrastructure investments, and the role of bond markets in infrastructure investments. The book explores ASEAN+3 efforts in developing local currency bond markets to provide long-term local financing for infrastructure investment while providing financial resilience. It also examines the use of green bonds to finance sustainable growth in Asia and the role of housing bond markets in infrastructure investment"--

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between the speed of buildup of private debt (household and corporate) and the depth of recessions. To do this, we differentiate between financial recessions and normal recessions on the basis of how quickly their private debt builds up. In addition to output recessions, we look at consumption and investment recessions. We find that financial recessions are deeper than normal recessions in advanced economies−and the differences become even more pronounced when emerging market economies are added to the sample. Our evidence suggests that a buildup in corporate debt is especially damaging for emerging markets during financial recessions. A higher ratio of debt to gross domestic product−in other words, less fiscal space− exacerbates recessions only beyond a certain threshold level, suggesting a nonlinear effect. We find that the buildup of corporate debt−and not just household debt−can worsen recessions, especially in emerging market economies.

In this study, we attempt to understand the role of greater access to finance, i.e., stocks, bonds, and bank loans, in public-private partnership (PPP) investment in developing countries. Most developing countries still depend heavily on fiscal financing for infrastructure projects. Our empirical results reconfirm the fact that banks remain the major source of finance for infrastructure projects. The domestic bond market should be further developed to have depth and liquidity enough to provide longterm funding for private sector investors. Interestingly, we find a negative impact of bond market development on PPP investment. A possible interpretation is that financing through government bonds, which dominates bond markets in developing countries, discourages private sector participation by reducing financing access to the corporate bond market. Our evidence underlines the importance of a well-functioning corporate bond market in developing countries, which can offer long-term financing to private sector participation in infrastructure investments.

Since the launch of Bitcoin in 2009, the spectacular rise and fall of cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology have attracted global attention. While the application of distributed ledger technology presents great economic and business potential, significant volatility and speculative trading of cryptocurrencies have raised concerns over investor and consumer protection and prompted government interventions within their respective jurisdictions. This study focuses on the six Bitcoin trading markets comprising 99% of global trading volume as of February 2018. Adopting the event study methodology to newly compiled information about local regulation events, we find that the effect of government regulations on the Bitcoin price is only short-lived, but regulations discourage trading activities for a longer term in local markets. Interestingly, however, the repressive effect of domestic regulations on trading activities can be mitigated by the domestic financial market openness. Together, these findings are consistent with the view that Bitcoin markets are globally integrated and that, to uphold market integrity, international cooperation would be essential.