This paper estimates the economic returns to education in China from 1989 to 2009, using the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) dataset. We find that education returns for one additional year generally increase from 2.6% in 1989 to 7.9% in 2009. Education returns, however, may reflect...

The rapid and massive increase in rural-to-urban worker flows to the coast of China has drawn recent attention to the welfare of migrants working in urban regions, particularly to their working conditions and pay; serious concern is raised regarding pay discrimination against rural migrants....

Because Hayek’s view goes beyond the Walrasian framework, his descriptive arguments on socialist planned economies are prone to be misunderstood. This paper clarifies Hayek’s arguments by using them as a basis to construct a model of total factor productivity. The model shows that...

Given that China is already the world’s largest carbon emitter and its emissions continue to rise rapidly in line with its industrialization and urbanization, there is no disagreement that China eventually needs to take on binding greenhouse gas emissions caps. However, the key challenges are...

In March 2005, riots erupted in South Korea against Japan for claiming sovereignty over some rocky uninhabited islets (0.23 km2). Five weeks earlier, riots did not erupt in South Korea when North Korea proved that it has nuclear weapons. How can we explain moral outrage in one case, when the...

China has been the world’s second largest carbon emitter for years. Recent studies show that China had overtaken the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter in 2007. This has put China on the spotlight, just at a time when the world community starts negotiating a post-Kyoto climate regime under...

Maintaining today’s global imbalances would help to overcome the major disproportion of our times – income gap between developed and developing countries. This gap was widening for 500 years and only now, in the recent 50 years, there are some signs that this gap is starting to decrease. The...