Using data from multiple sources, we show that in Bangladesh, the increase in real wages, particularly female wages, has accelerated since the late 2000s, suggesting that the Lewis turning point (the point at which the labor market starts to shift in favor of workers) has arrived in Bangladesh....

As sex ratio imbalances have become a problem in an increasing number of countries, it is important to understand their consequences. With the defeat of the Kuomintang Party in China, more than one million soldiers and civilians, mainly young males, retreated to Taiwan in the late 1940s....

Although the role of industrial policy in economic development is a frequent topic of debate in both the literature and the political arena, most such discussions focus on industrial policymaking at the national level. Using a case study of a potato cluster in China, we show that industrial...

It has been widely documented that the poor spend a significant proportion of their income on gifts even at the expense of basic consumption. We test three competing explanations of this phenomenon—peer effect, status concern, and risk pooling—based on a census-type primary household survey...

"It has been argued in the literature that China is underurbanized in large part because of restrictions on migration. While the presence of migration barriers can help explain why existing cities fail to achieve their optimal size, it cannot explain the lack of cities. Although migration has...

Knowledge of actual poverty prevalence is important for any society concerned with improving public welfare and reducing poverty. In this paper, we calculate and compare the poverty incidence rate in China using four nationally representative surveys: the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) of...

Rural nonfarm development plays a key role in generating employment in many developing countries. Clustering is an important form of industrial organization in the rural nonfarm sector. Based on a primary survey of both urban and rural handloom weaver clusters in Ethiopia, one of the country’s...

In the past several years, labor shortages in China have become an issue. However, there is heated debate as to whether China has passed the Lewis turning point and moved from a period of unlimited supply to a new era of labor shortage. Most empirical studies on this topic focus on estimation of...

Focusing on a remote area in rural China, we use a panel census of households in 26 villages to show that socially observable spending has risen sharply in recent years. We demonstrate that such spending by households is highly sensitive to social spending by other villagers. This suggests that...