This paper addresses the challenges facing China in accelerating the pace of rural-urban migration as part of its on-going economic development programme. It explains the push and pull influences on migration and in particular explains why a continuing focus on urbanisation is justified by the...

Small communities sometimes increase their local sales tax rate in order to maintain or expand public services. The question addressed here is what is the net effect of changing sales tax rates on revenues from sales taxes? Using both semiparametric and nonparametric regression, we find retail...

Pro-poor growth has been identified as one of the most promising pathways to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or any subsequent set of goals aiming to reduce poverty worldwide. Related research has developed a multitude of instruments to measure pro-poor growth using absolute and...

In the canonical consumer demand problem, an agent makes a decision about quantities to consume, under the assumption that all possible varieties are available and can be accessed at zero cost. Quantities of each budget item are adjusted to achieve maximum utility subject to the budget...

Food processing has been widely recognized as a traditional, unskilled-labor intensive production. Yet rapid development in technology drives food processing into more sophisticated and technology-oriented industry. This paper utilizes a fixed effects model to test the hypothesis that the food...

This paper uses stated and revealed preference data from a choice-based conjoint survey instrument to estimate willingness to pay for distance-based local food products. The survey was administered to three different groups of respondents: members of a consumer buying club, a random sample of...

In this paper we conduct a series of eld experiments in rural India in order to measure preferences related to risk, loss, and ambiguity. Disaggregating by data, we nd that on average women are signicantly more risk averse and loss averse than men, though the higher average risk aversion arises...

The flow of remittances can affect poverty rates, development, and investments in the receiving country and households. Using World Bank survey data from three countries, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya, this research addresses the senders’ and recipients’ characteristics may affect remittance...

We compare the effect of anonymous social network ratings (Yelp.com) and peer group recommendations on restaurant demand. We conduct a two stage choice experiment and combine it with online social network reviews from Yelp.com and find that peers have a stronger impact on restaurant demand than...