This paper reviews the unique experience of Nepal, a land - locked least developed country in South Asia, bringing out lessons from the Nepalese experience which have wider applicability. In Nepal, as in other countries, increasing attention is being given to the inclusivity of growth. In particular, we observe the importance of remittances in reducing poverty in Nepal. But the impacts of remittances and migration on poverty should not be understood only in relation to increased household incomes and consumption.

Trade is an important component of many Least Developed Countries’ (LDCs) development strategies. The ability of LDCs to expand export earnings depends on growing world trade, market access and the ability to diversify export products. LDCs, already facing internal supply constraints, need to be able to export without undue barriers; market access is therefore a crucial factor in countries ability to participate in global and regional trade.

Export-led strategies in Asia and the Pacific have been successful in promoting economic growth in the region. Over the last two decades, the developing countries in the region have grown on average around 8 per cent as compared to 3 per cent in the Latin America. In the post-2008 global financial crisis era, however, the challenge for the region is to reposition trade and investment policies taking into account new realities in the international economy towards achieving more inclusive and sustainable development as well as to build resilient and green economies.

Fragmentation and agglomeration forces, together with the concept of just-in-time production, have made it possible for many countries to establish manufacturing production through vertical specialization and economies-of-scale even though they do not have a comparative advantage at the level of all manufacturing production. This is true for Thailand today, much as it previously was in Taiwan Province of China and, some decades before that, the Republic of Korea.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a plurilateral agreement concerning anti- counterfeiting measures among the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea, the Member States of the European Union (EU), Australia, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland. At the time of writing the negotiation rounds of ACTA have been conducted and the abovementioned members are at various stages of ratification or enactment of the agreement.

In recent years, preferential trading agreements (PTAs) have proliferated. Between 1950 and 2012, 511 notifications of PTAs have been received by the GATT/WTO and 370 PTAs were notified by the GATT/WTO under Article XXIV. 1 Moreover, in the last decade alone half of the all PTAs signed involve at least one Asian economy (ESCAP, 2011). However, the depth and scope of these agreements varies widely. Some agreements are not much more than vague, symbolic statements about the importance of economic cooperation. Others prescribe deep economic reforms.

A ny discussion on contemporary industrial policy in the Asia-Pacific region ought to start with a caveat. That is, while this subject may "be back" for some, to others it "never left." In this respect, this region has probably given more credence to industrial policy for longer than others. Still, the profile of industrial policy has risen over the past few years.

Climate change mitigation and adaptation actions have high priority in multilateral and unilateral policy agendas of governments around the globe (see, for example, Wermelinger and Barnes, 2010). This trend was not stopped by the recent global economic crisis and the succeeding period marked by increasing market uncertainties. Governments intervened to help and save domestic industries with the introduction of bailouts, export subsidies, local content requirements and green investment incentives, among others.

In 1953, Harvard economist Wassily Leontief published his fi nding, known as the “Leontief paradox,” that United States exports were less capital intensive than its imports, which contradicted standard predictions for a capital rich country. 1 Fifty years later, another Harvard economist, Dani Rodrik, argues in a cross-country study that the technological sophistication of Chinese exports in the past decade has been so high that it can not be explained simply by the economic fundamentals of a low-income country abundant in unskilled-labour (Rodrik, 2006).

Women worldwide continue to face significant challenges in becoming equal partners to men in terms of economic power, legal rights and political representation. In particular, women have less access to paid employment, land ownership, credit and capital. They are also often paid less for their labor at comparable skill attainment, and are more frequently working in vulnerable employment , such as self-employment, or in the informal economy. Gender inequalities are very pronounced in the Asia-Pacific region, more so than anywhere else in the world except Africa.