In recent decades, the global number of refugees has reached record highs. While public debate in advanced democracies often focuses on the increasing visibility of refugees at their borders, the majority are hosted not in the Global North but in the Global South. Yet, even within the Global South, the distribution of refugee arrivals is strikingly uneven. Some countries receive vast numbers of refugees, whereas others host very few, despite facing similar geographic or economic conditions. What explains this variation? What does it reveal about the political foundations of refugee protection?

Career decisions are often seen as personal choices, yet in societies shaped by strong family ties and traditional norms, they are rarely made alone. This column presents how young Filipinos perceive career decision-making autonomy when personal aspirations conflict with parental advice. Using an experimental vignette survey with 1,174 university students, participants evaluated whether a hypothetical son or daughter appeared autonomous when choosing a career despite parental pressure. Results reveal a consistent pattern: daughters were perceived as more autonomous than sons. The findings point to the importance of fostering gender-balanced autonomy in career decision-making.

Although technological progress is driven by technological learning derived from domestic and foreign knowledge sources, the dynamic interaction between the two principal learning modes—learning by doing (domestic sources) and learning by importing (foreign sources)—remains insufficiently understood, despite their crucial influence on a country’s transition from duplicative imitation to creative imitation and eventually to innovation. Drawing on an embedded case study of China’s successful catch‑up in nuclear power reactor technology, we identify a “smile curve” in the evolution of technological learning, wherein the relative significance of learning by doing and learning by importing follows a U-shaped trajectory. Furthermore it shows that intangible (e.g., talent acquisition) and tangible (e.g., equipment) components of learning by importing exhibit the same smile curve pattern. These findings provide potential solutions for latecomers to overcome technological catch-up challenges through sequence learning strategies.

Why does a leader who cemented his political dominance through a centralized presidential system increasingly struggle to deliver economic stability and political confidence? This column, based on my latest book on Turkey’s Erdoğan administration, argues that the answer lies in the gradual erosion of what can be called “attraction politics.” For much of his rule, Erdoğan maintained dominance not through coercion but through a combination of economic performance, social protection, and narrative control. These pillars sustained broad public support for nearly two decades. Yet they rested on constitutional institutions. Once the centralized presidential system eroded these institutions, the three pillars no longer translated into effective governance.

Acquiring human capital and climbing the ladder of manufacturing sophistication are standard policy aspirations for middle-income countries. Recently China, itself a middle-income country, has expanded production and exports in product categories demanding of greater skills and technological complexity. Its success in production and exports has attenuated opportunities for similar countries to expand their own skill-intensive exports. We use a global trade model to quantify the effects of China’s growth on export opportunities for other countries, then explore the consequences of reduced relative skills demand for returns to schooling and incentives for skills development in those countries’ labor markets.

With the rise of digital platforms, it is often assumed that we have entered a "flat world" (Friedman 2007) where content can be delivered globally at no extra cost. In a recent article (Watabe, Yang, and Kanasheuski 2025), we challenge this assumption using data from the digital game platform Steam. We find that even in a purely digital environment where physical shipping costs are zero, consumers are still significantly less likely to purchase games developed in distant countries. Further analysis suggests that information barriers and cultural preferences prevent the digital economy from being truly borderless.

In many rural economies, families rely heavily on seasonal farm work, and children’s labor can be essential during peak agricultural periods. When schools schedule high-stakes examinations during these peak seasons, parents choose between keeping their children in school or sending them to the fields to secure household income— facing the difficult task of weighing the immediate benefit of their children's labor against the potential long-term gains of continued schooling. This study finds that when national school examinations coincide with the main harvest season, dropout increases sharply among children from agricultural households—predominantly among boys of secondary-school age. This research highlights a largely overlooked constraint in education policy: the timing of the school year matters as much as the structure of schooling itself.

Political power in China has become significantly centralized under Xi Jinping, yet little research has examined how Xi’s impressive consolidation of power has affected the country’s policy agenda. Our analysis of Xi’s speeches and activities (Lim, Ito, and Zhang 2024) reveals evident shifts in policy priorities from his first to his second term. The scope of top-level attention has narrowed, and the policymaking focus has become more tightly aligned with Xi’s personal agenda, indicating how the personalization of authority is reshaping China’s governance.

This column presents new evidence on the impact of minimum wages in Vietnam from 2012 to 2020. Using large-scale labor force data, the study (Nguyen 2025) shows that higher minimum wages did not reduce overall employment or monthly earnings. Instead, minimum wages reduced the working hours of workers. As a result, hourly earnings increased, implying improved productivity. The findings highlight the promise and challenges of minimum wage policy in a lower-middle-income country.

Does the Nobel Peace Prize influence public opinion? In an article (Kikuta and Hanayama 2024), we show that when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to women’s rights activists, such as Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad in 2018, it improves people’s perceptions about women’s rights groups across the world. Further analysis indicates that the effect is particularly large among people who hold traditional gender values, implying that the prize pressured conservative people to amend their attitudes. This suggests that the seemingly symbolic event—the Nobel Peace Prize—has real-world impacts, encouraging further studies on symbolic actions in international relations.

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim assumed leadership as the 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia on November 24, 2022. My book, Anwar Ibrahim: Tenacious in Dissent, Hopeful in Power, investigates his record as a political dissident prior to his rise to power and evaluates his performance while in power.

This column is a summary of my recently published book which explores the under-theorized role of informal institutions in socio-political life. It proposes a novel, multi-dimensional classification of informal institutions, identifying four new types. The study further argues that formal institutions' exclusionary nature and resulting legitimacy deficits promote the emergence of informal institutions. Moreover, changes in formal institutional effectiveness or legitimacy, evolving socio-political cultures, and shifting power dynamics among actors are likely to drive informal institutional change. The study illustrates these ideas using four empirical cases from the Turkish case.

Accurate identification of individuals in poverty is crucial for designing effective antipoverty programs. Current poverty metrics rely on household-level consumption and the per capita approach, which assumes equal allocation among members. My recent study on eight West African countries recalibrated poverty measures to account for intrahousehold inequality and economies of scale. The analysis reveals two key findings. First, women and children experience significantly higher deprivation levels when intrahousehold inequality is considered. Second, the per capita expenditure approach misclassifies poverty status—underestimating child poverty while overestimating adult poverty. These results argue for integrating intrahousehold inequality into poverty metrics to improve accuracy and policy targeting.

Psychological burdens stemming from social stigma can significantly influence individuals’ economic behavior, particularly in health-related decisions such as the adoption of effective health products. This creates a challenge for policymakers seeking to increase the uptake of such products to improve public health outcomes. Subsidies alone may be insufficient to drive adoption when stigma is involved. Drawing on insights from both economics and public health literature, this study investigates whether coupling subsidies with participation in a group discussion session can enhance demand for sanitary pads in Nepal—a product affected by menstrual stigma. The findings indicate that combining modest subsidies with group discussions offers a more cost-effective strategy for promoting stigmatized health products.

The crisis of representative democracy has resulted in diminished trust in political parties and has also affected civil society organizations. While traditional trade unions and interest groups associated with political parties have weakened, social movements have become increasingly active in response to dissatisfaction among citizens. This study examines whether political distrust leads to trust or distrust in the student movement in Chile, a country that has recently experienced a crisis of representative democracy. Historically, the student movement has been aligned with political parties but it has regained momentum since the 2000s. The findings indicate that citizens who distrust political parties also distrust the student movement, perceiving it as part of the political elite. Conversely, those who oppose the government are more likely to express trust in the movement when students actively protest against government actions. These results underscore the challenges civil society organizations face in sustaining legitimacy in society and suggest that the adaptability of student movements to sociopolitical changes over time may help sustain their influence in the long run.