This paper examines how employee earnings at small firms respond to a cash flow shock in the form of a government R&D grant. We use ranking data on applicant firms, which we link to IRS W2 earnings and other U.S. Census Bureau datasets. In a regression discontinuity design, we find that the...

The paper argues that networked firms are likely to have an advantage in securing external finance in countries with weak legal and judicial institutions since it helps financial institutions to minimize the underlying agency costs of lending. An analysis of recent BEEPS data from fifteen...

Why are socially beneficial reforms not implemented? One simple answer to this question (which has received little attention in the literature) is that this may be caused by generalized uncertainty about the effectiveness of reforms. If agents are unsure about whether a proposed reform will...

Low Female Labor Force Participation (FLFP) constitutes a foregone opportunity at both the macro and at the micro levels, potentially increasing the vulnerability of households and lowering the long-run development perspectives of a country. Most international organizations and national policy...

We study the dispersion in rates of provincial economic- and TFP growth in China. Ourresults show that regional growth patterns can be understood as a function of severalinterrelated factors, which include investment in physical capital, human capital, andinfrastructure capital; the infusion of...

This paper documents the extent of inequality of educational opportunity in India spanning the period 1983-2004 using National Sample Survey (NSS) data. We build on recent developments in the literature that has operationalized concepts in the inequality of opportunity theory (including...

We report the first results for Korean firms on the incidence, diffusion, scope and effects of diverse employee financial participation schemes, such as Profit Sharing Plans (PSPs), Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), Stock Option Plans (SOPs) and Team Incentive Plans (TIPs). In do doing, we...

Unique residential history data with retrospective information on parental assets are used to study household wealth mobility in 141 villages in rural Bangladesh. Regression estimates of father-son correlations and analyses of intergenerational transition matrices show substantial persistence in...

Industry mean wages in China have exhibited sharply increased dispersion since the early 1990s. The upward trend in differences of average wages among major industry groups parallels increases in wage and income inequality not only between rural and urban sectors but within the urban economy as...

In this paper we provide an overview of China's human capital strategy and educational achievements over the last two decades. While every one acknowledges China as an economic superpower, very few are aware of or realize China's notable achievements in education as well as its...