Based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, People's Republic of China, I offer a reading of Reform and Opening (Gaige Kaifang) in terms of how individuals recognized, manipulated, avoided, and responded to the Chinese state apparatus during the Deng...

The dissertation explores the problem of institution-building in nascent capitalist economies, with the emphasis on the role of culture in the genesis of new institutional forms. To help better understand the nature of the post-communist transformation in Russia, I address the questions of...

This dissertation explores the role of efficiency of redistributive institutions (ERI)on redistribution. The first substantive essay proposes a theoretical model to explain thelack of strong empirical evidence in favor of a positive relationship between incomeinequality and redistribution. This...

This study is an attempt to test the hypothesis that outward orientation is favorable for income distribution in labor abundant country. The hypothesis is examined by using data from a cross-section of 34 developing countries. A positive relationship is found between outward orientation and...

The present research was an analysis of cities as social systems, using data for the 148 SMSA's of 200,000 or larger population in 1970. It examines the relationship among variables representative of several theoretical concepts, which are system size, productive output, complexity, growth,...

This dissertation addresses the problem of informational and legal restrictions on employment screening processes such as educational requirements and standardized testing. For the past two decades, the legal system in the U.S. has struggled with this issue and has labeled certain information or...

The proportion of a unit of government's budget devoted to labor costs determines whether cost reductions at the metropolitan level are achieved through fragmentation or consolidation. Consolidating capital intense functions at higher levels of government is the optimal cost-reducing strategy....

Abramson and Inglehart find a significant trend toward postmaterialist values in Western Europe, which they argue is largely driven by the gradual processes of generational replacement. Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin argue that this trend is a methodological artifact of the wording of Inglehart's...