The recent experience of infrastructure investment in the People's Republic of China (PRC) suggests an intertwined relationship between investment, urbanization, and economic growth. In one mechanism, urbanization generates demand for infrastructure investment, which then drives economic growth...

This study suggests that the development process of a less-developed country can be divided into two stages, which demonstrate significantly different properties in areas such as structural endowments, production modes, income distribution, and the forces that drive economic growth. The two...

The impact of the expansion of the middle class in developing countries has been widely investigated in recent years. The middle class is generally apprehended by its overall demographic size, which, we believe, may hide crucial features and differences across nations because the composition of...

This paper introduces a new index of financial inclusion for 153 advanced, emerging, and developing economies using a comprehensive set of new indicators, grouped into four different dimensions: financial access, usage, financial development, and fintech infrastructure. The fintech...

This paper presents research findings on how urbanization enhances productivity and economic growth in both urban and rural sectors. Through agglomeration effects, employment opportunities and income levels can largely increase. In addition, the mechanisms of sharing, matching, and learning are...

Typhoons, floods, and other weather-related shocks can inflict suffering on local populations and create life-threatening conditions for the poor. Yet, natural disasters also present a development opportunity to upgrade capital stock, adopt new technologies, enhance the risk-resiliency of...

This paper establishes a general equilibrium trade model and adopts the "market access" approach to measure the impact of the high-speed railway (HSR) network on the economic growth of 110 of the main prefecture-level cities of the People's Republic of China, for which we manually collect the...

This research aimed to examine the factors affecting the participation of female rural-urban migrants in online marketplaces, and the welfare gains and their distribution from their participation. Our analysis was based on a unique data set of rural households, villages, and rural-urban migrants...