Nonfarm activity plays an increasingly important role in rural household income. Based on data from the Living Standards Measurement Study in the provinces of Hebei and Liaoning, the authors study the distribution of nonfarm income in rural China. First, they assume nonfarm income as an...

This paper provides evidence consistent with elite capture of Social Fund investment projects in Ecuador. Exploiting a unique combination of data-sets on village-level income distributions, Social Fund project administration, and province level electoral results, the authors test a simple model...

We analyze general equilibrium relationships between trade policy and the household distribution of income, decomposing social welfare into real income level and variance components and emphasizing Gini and Atkinson indexes. We embed these inequality adjusted social welfare functions in a...

According to T.W. Schultz, the returns to human capital are highest in economic environments experiencing unexpected price, productivity, and technology shocks that create "disequilibria." In such environments, the ability of firms and individuals to adapt their resource allocations to shocks...

This paper reviews common challenges faced by researchers interested in measuring the impact of migration and remittances on income, poverty, inequality, and human capital (or, in general,welfare) as well as difficulties confronting development practitioners in converting this research into...

An early cross-country, empirical analysis of value-added tax revenues on a sample of 34 countries estimates a model that can be used to predict revenues in countries contemplating the introduction of the VAT. It also confirms conventional wisdom from theoretical and case studies. The key...

Governments of developing countries typically spend between 20 and 30 percent of gross domestic product. Hence, small changes in the efficiency of public spending could have a major impact on aggregate productivity growth and gross domestic product levels. Therefore, measuring efficiency and...

A randomized control trial was conducted to study whether providing 10th grade students with information about the returns to upper secondary and tertiary education, and a source of financial aid for tertiary education, can contribute to improve student performance. The study finds that the...

The authors examine the role of governance-measured by level of corruption and quality of bureaucracy-and ask how it affects the relationship between public spending and outcomes. Their main innovation is to see if differences in efficacy of public spending can be explained by quality of...

Does radio access improve public service provision? And if so, does it do so by increasing government accountability to citizens, or by persuading households to take advantage of publicly-provided services? Prior research has argued that citizens with greater access to mass media receive greater...