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Myanmar is located between 9deg. 55min. and 28deg. 15min. north latitude and 92deg. 10min. and 101deg. 10min. east longitude. It is the westernmost country in southeast Asia. Its bordering countries are Bangladesh, India, China, Laos, and Thailand. Over 50% of the eastern coastline of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea constitutes the western border. The country occupies a total land area of 676,577km² and is home to 57.5 million people in 14 states and regions, per 2008 estimate. The general topography of the country is high in the north and the west with north–south-oriented mountain ranges extending from the Himalayas. The eastern side of the country is a wide plateau connected to Yunnan, China. The central area and the more southern parts of the country are relatively low. Rivers run from north to south in most parts of the country. A map of Myanmar's states and regions is shown in Fig. 1.

The Union of Myanmar is located in mainland Southeast Asia and shares borders with India, China, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Bangladesh. It is situated between the Himalayan ranges and the Bay of Bengal. Due to these diversified geographical features, Myanmar is highly vulnerable to different kinds of hazards, and has experienced many kinds of disasters in the past, according to the Hazard Profile of Myanmar (2009), such as cyclones, floods, storms, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, and fires. For the general public, cyclones are considered the major menace in the country, however the recent earthquake with a magnitude of 6.9 in Shan state on March 24, 2011 made inhabitants realize that they are living with the risk of earthquakes as well. According to New Light of Myanmar (the State-run newspaper) on March 26, 2011, the earthquake resulted in 73 deaths (official record of the country). Besides earthquakes and cyclones, there have been many victims of landslides, and the people at coastal areas face the risk of tsunami in the case of earthquakes that occur in the Indian Ocean. In 2004, 61 people were killed in Myanmar by the Indian Ocean tsunami according to the Hazard Profile of Myanmar (2009). Furthermore, the year of 2011 witnessed chronic and severe floods all over the country.

This article provides a detailed investigation of how Lewis revisited classical and Marxian concepts such as productive/unproductive labor, economic surplus, subsistence wages, reserve army, and capital accumulation in his investigation of economic development. The Lewis 1954 development model is compared to other models advanced at the time by Harrod, Domar, Swan, Kaldor, Solow, von Neumann, Nurkse, Rosenstein-Rodan, Myint, and others. Lewis applied the notion of economic duality to open and closed economies.

Most models attempting to give an account of trade-induced symmetric increase in wage inequality have abandoned the factor price equalization (FPE) framework. The present chapter retains the FPE framework and identifies a plausible route through which trade might increase wage inequality in all trading countries. A two-sector model with one constant returns sector producing basic goods and another increasing returns to scale sector producing fancy goods is developed. A quasi-linear utility function is used to capture the divide between basic and fancy goods. There are two types of productive factors, skilled and unskilled labour, and they differ with respect to their occupational options. Skilled labour can work both in the skill using fancy goods sector and in the unskilled labour using basic good producing sector, whereas unskilled labour is tied down to unskilled job. The model holds possibilities of multiple equilibria and under reasonable parameterization skill premium increases in all countries following trade.

Political corruption takes many forms across different countries and regions. The types of corruption that occur in American politics are drastically different from the clientelism, nepotism, and corrupt electoral practices that are seen in the developing world. This chapter will analyze three distinct cases of political corruption in Southeast Asian politics: clientelism in Cambodia, nepotism in Thailand, and the 2021 coup d'état in Myanmar. All three cases highlight the unique challenges facing developing democracies and reveal that, while political corruption affects all countries to a degree, distinct regional and cultural differences produce different forms of corruption in Southeast Asia than in the United States.

This chapter investigates the effect of customer orientation and CRM organization on hotel financial performance. A model of enhancing hotel financial performance through customer satisfaction practices was tested. Customer satisfaction was hypothesized to be a mediator in the relationships between customer orientation and CRM organization and the result being financial performance. The sample consisted of 54 hotels that was made up of three 5-star, fifteen 4-star, and thirty-six 3-star hotels in Ghana. A quantitative deductive approach was employed to gather data using cross-sectional survey, which was analyzed using PLS-SEM to check the validity, reliability and factor loading of the data. The findings revealed that, CRM organization enhances customer satisfaction and financial performance of hotels. Also, customer orientation showed significant positively related to customer satisfaction in the hotels. Surprisingly, the effects of CRM organization and customer orientation on financial performance through customer satisfaction were insignificant. Thus, customer satisfaction failed to mediate the effect of CRM organization and customer orientation on the financial performance of hotels. This suggests that though an effective CRM organization enhances customer satisfaction, it directly affects the financial performance of hotels. The outcomes have useful implications for CRM implementation on hotel financial performance in Ghana.