Income inequality has been a growing concern since Global Financial Crisis. But how do regional institutions contribute to the debate on income equality? ASEAN’s normative framework is underpinned by the principle of non-interference while ASEAN has a mandate to establish an equitable economic community post 2015. This study examines if regional income inequality is considered a regional problem, and if so, is the concern significant enough to overcome the principle of non-interference allowing ASEAN to play a greater role in policy formation. ...

Population aging has significant economic and social costs, and this paper studies its impacts on inequality, both theoretically and empirically. First, we build a two-period overlapping-generation model with an uncertain lifetime and find that population aging has the overall effect of increasing income and consumption inequality within the society. For the empirical analysis, we use household data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey to assess the age effect on income and consumption inequality in the People’s Republic of China and confirm ...

This article develops the concept of “reign-seeking” to capture the unprecedented collective action of the Thai professional and official elite prior to the 2014 military coup and the establishment of a military regime. It argues that this phenomenon reflects broad and deep political dynamics, for which the dominant scholarship on authoritarianism and Thai politics cannot adequately explain. The changing incentives of these supposedly non-partisan actors are interwoven with neo-liberal governance reform driven by a desire for depoliticisation and ...