The expansion of digital financial services is reshaping business operations across developing economies. Using Bank Indonesia’s 2023 survey of over 5,000 enterprises, this study examines the role of financial digitalization in business performance and innovation among ultra-micro, micro, and small enterprises in Indonesia. Employing inverse probability weighting regression adjustment to address observable confounder bias, we find that financial digitalization is positively associated with business performance—specifically higher revenue, sales growth, and employment—as well as business innovation, including market expansion, product diversification, and exports. However, it is also associated with higher costs, with no significant short-term gain in profit. These associations vary across firm and owner characteristics: Older firms and those outside Java and Bali experience stronger performance gains, while younger firms and ultra-micro firms show greater innovation responses. These findings highlight the importance of targeted policies addressing digital literacy, infrastructure, and regulation to support inclusive digital transformation among ultra-micro, micro, and small enterprises.
This study uses high-frequency, geographically detailed mobile phone location data to estimate origin–destination migration flows—information that is not available in official statistics—enabling a high-resolution analysis of internal migration in Thailand and its sectoral drivers. A gravity-type model incorporating push and pull factors, together with a dynamic fixed-effects panel regression, is employed. The findings confirm that the migration–urbanization nexus persists and continues to shape Thailand’s structural transformation. Differences in earning opportunities are crucial, particularly in attracting workers from the agriculture sector to the manufacturing sector. The analysis also highlights the role of agriculture as a shelter sector, accommodating in-migration during the coronavirus disease pandemic. The reversal of migration patterns during the pandemic was driven by sharp declines in earning opportunities in the service and manufacturing sectors rather than by incentives originating from agriculture. Beyond income factors, digital technology plays an important role in attracting in-migration, except in manufacturing, where a potential labor replacement effect of technology is observed.
Countries experiencing prolonged conflict and economic isolation face severe constraints on designing poverty reduction policies. In such settings, household-level diversification is often promoted as a pathway to resilience, yet credible evidence on its effectiveness remains limited. Using household survey data, this paper examines whether livelihood and crop diversification are associated with lower multidimensional poverty in rural Afghanistan, a highly fragile and data-constrained context.1 The findings indicate that livelihood and crop diversifications are associated with a lower likelihood of households being multidimensionally poor, though the magnitude and statistical reliability of these associations vary across diversification strategies. Besides diversification strategies, household and locational characteristics affect multidimensional poverty, suggesting that diversification alone is inadequate to reduce poverty. The findings highlight both the potential and the limits of diversification as a poverty reduction strategy under fragility. While focused on Afghanistan, the analysis speaks more broadly to debates on household adjustment and poverty dynamics in fragile economies.
This paper investigates the determinants of the uneven development of the digital economy across the 63 provinces of Viet Nam from 2020 to 2025. Since a province’s digital economy is shaped not only by its own characteristics but also by those of its neighbors, we use spatial econometric models that explicitly allow for these cross-provincial linkages. Statistical tests confirm that these spatial linkages are a genuine and important feature of provincial digital economy outcomes. We find that human capital is the only factor with a robust and economically meaningful influence: A better-trained workforce raises a province’s own digital economy but tends to draw activity away from its neighbors. Foreign direct investment, digital infrastructure, institutional quality, and cybersecurity show no statistically significant effect once these spatial linkages and province-specific differences are considered. Ultimately, the results suggest that regionally coordinated strategies are more effective than individual provincial competition in promoting digital economy development.
The Republic of Korea (ROK) faces an economic crisis driven by rapid population aging, approaching negative economic growth. I quantitatively examine the full range of policy responses and find that enhanced temporary labor migration is necessary, sufficient, and feasible to offset demographic drag. It is necessary because no other policy channel (including capital accumulation, artificial intelligence adoption, elderwork, education, or pronatalism) has the clear quantitative potential to meaningfully offset aging in the best available forecasts. It is sufficient because a rise in noncitizen worker prevalence from 3% to about 14% over 4 decades would offset most of the demographic drag on economic growth in the ROK. And it is feasible because this trajectory resembles that already experienced by Malaysia and Australia. Many advanced economies will follow in the ROK’s demographic footsteps and have much to learn from its decisions.
