Market reforms are generally credited with the rapid growth enjoyed by China's rural sector. This growth has not been without some cost, however, as inequality has also increased. Estimates suggest that the Gini rose from less than 0.20 to over 0.40 during this period. In this paper we go behind...

The role of township-owned enterprises in the rapid growth of the Chinese economy during reform is widely acknowledged. Beginning in the mid-1990s, however, these firms began to be privatized. Perhaps the most striking feature of this process is that it has not occurred uniformly across...

We document the evolution of the income distribution in rural China, from 1987 through 1999, with an emphasis on investigating increases in inequality associated with transition and economic development. With a backdrop of perceived improvements in average living standards, we ask whether...

This paper exploits the panel dimension of the Vietnam Living Standards Survey (VLSS) in order to analyze the main changes occurring in agriculture in Vietnam over the period 1993- 1998. This period was marked by a continuation of the reforms that began in 1988 with the implementation of...

This thesis consists of three empirical chapters related to distributional outcomes, such as poverty and inequality, in three different contexts.Chapter 1 outlines a class of statistical procedures that permit testing of a broad range of multidimensional stochastic dominance hypotheses. We apply...

When China acceded to World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, there were fears that Chinese firms would lose market share in key sectors to foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). Although aggregate data often indicate a shift in favor of FIEs, indigenous firms in many cases have slowly increased...

This paper examines the question of how a shift in the end point of a global value chain alters the prospects for industrial upgrading in a developing economy through an analysis of the mobile telecom sector in China. Over the last decade, China has become the world's largest market for mobile...

Indigenous firms in developing countries with large domestic markets have unique advantages: the low-end provides “natural” protection from foreign competition, while higher-end segments provide incentives for foreign firms to localize activities and develop channels for future...