Asia Regional Integration Center

The Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) is the Tokyo-based think tank of the Asian Development Bank. ADBI provides demand-driven policy research, capacity building and training, and outreach to help developing countries in Asia and the Pacific practically address sustainability challenges, accelerate socioeconomic change, and realize more robust, inclusive, and sustainable growth.

The most inclusive intergovernmental platform in the Asia-Pacific region. The Commission promotes cooperation among its 53 member States and 9 associate members in pursuit of solutions to sustainable development challenges. ESCAP is one of the five regional commissions of the United Nations.

The ESCAP secretariat supports inclusive, resilient and sustainable development in the region by generating action-oriented knowledge, and by providing technical assistance and capacity-building services in support of national development objectives, regional agreements and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. ESCAP also provides support to partners at the national level. ESCAP’s national offer is rooted in and linked with the implementation of global and regional intergovernmental frameworks, agreements, and other instruments. The outline of the ESCAP’s Offer of Support at the national level is available here.

The Dean and CEO of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), the Tokyo-based think tank of the Asian Development Bank that promotes the realization of a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific through policy research and capacity building. Born in 1960 in Tokyo, Dean Sonobe obtained his PhD in economics from Yale University and BA in economics from the University of Tokyo. His research interests are centered on the empirics of economic development, particularly the roles of industrial clusters, human capital, social capital, management practices, and market competition in industrial development in developing Asia and other regions. Before joining ADBI in April 2020, Dean Sonobe served for six years as a vice president of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo and taught economics for thirty years at Tokyo Metropolitan University and GRIPS. Dean Sonobe is a recipient of the Nikkei Book Publication Prize and the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize, and a founding board member of the Japanese Association for Development Economics.

Chief Economist and Director General of the Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department of the Asian Development Bank. He leads ADB’s work on policy research and regional cooperation and integration and on producing key analytical forecasts and reports, including the_Asian Development Outlook,_the bank’s flagship economic publication. Dr. Park has more than 2 decades of experience as a development economist. A well-known expert on the economy of the People’s Republic of China, he has directed a number of large-scale research projects in the country. He has also served as an international consultant for the World Bank and a member of the steering committee for the Asia-Pacific Research Universities’ Population Ageing Hub. Mr. Park has worked on a broad range of development issues including poverty and inequality, intergenerational mobility, microfinance, migration and labor markets, the future of work, and foreign investment. He is a founding director of HKUST’s Institute for Emerging Market Studies, was a professor at the University of Oxford, and associate professor at the University of Michigan. He has also held editorial positions at a number of leading economic journals. A national of the United States, he received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University and his doctorate in applied economics from Stanford University.