In this paper, we investigate the role of the social network nexus and the insurance nexus in determining household savings and productive capital formation in rural Vietnam. We analyze the issue in two dimensions, stocks and flows, and consider the exposure to negative shocks. The instrumental...

Published in China Agricultural Economic Review

This paper estimates the income effect of non productivity related discriminatory factors, compared to productivity related returns on human capital in Shenzhen. The design of the Shenzhen Household Survey 2005 that was employed enables us to include a large set of discriminating factors in a...

At any moment a student may decide to leave school and enter the labor market, or stay in the education system. The time of departure from school determines their level of academic achievement and formal qualification. Therefore, the major purpose of this paper is to derive a timing rule for...

We propose that the rate of creation and failure of new firm start-ups can be modelled as a search and matching process, as in labor market matching models. Deriving an "entrepreneurial" Beveridge curve, we show that a successful start-up depends on the efficiency with which entrepreneurial...

During the last 40 years the number and severity of economic, natural, and political disasters has significantly increased all over the world. Disasters are characterized by a highly uncertain frequency of occurrence and size of impact. Due to their relatively small probability, for a long time...

The assessment and alleviation of poverty remains an urgent question throughout the globe. Urban poverty, in particular is becoming more prevalent in China due to immense migration in recent years. To what extent is migration related to poverty, and do the factors that drag households into...

The employability of an aging population in a world of continuous technical change is top of the political agenda. Due to endogenous human capital depreciation, the effective retirement age is often below statutory retirement age resulting in unemployment among older workers. We analyze this...

As a direct effect of the financial crisis in 2008, public debt began to accumulate rapidly, eventually leading to the European sovereign debt crisis. However, the dramatic increase in government debt is not only happening in European countries. All major G7 countries are experiencing similar...

Though violent conflicts bear dramatic uncertainties, there is no closed theory addressing large uncertainties in conflict decisions. If a violent conflict is an investment in social, political, or economic change for rebels, how do large uncertainties like threatening waves of persecution...