To date there has been few systematic and comparative empirical analyses of the nature of economic development in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). We contribute to addressing this gap by exploring the patterns of structural change between 1980 and 2010, focusing on the...

Over the course of China's economic reforms, a pronounced divergence in the labor force participation patterns of rural and urban elders emerged – rural elders increased their rates of participation while urban elders reduced theirs. In this project, based on the data of the Chinese population...

This paper examines a famous puzzle in social science. Why do some nations report such high happiness? Denmark, for instance, regularly tops the league table of rich nations' well-being; Great Britain and the US enter further down; France and Italy do relatively poorly. Yet the explanation for...

We use twin data matched to register-based individual information on earnings and employment to examine the effect of height on life-time labor market outcomes. The use of twin data allows us to remove otherwise unobserved ability and other differences. The twin pair difference estimates from...

Is there a reward for basic skills in the German labor market? To answer this question, we examine the relationship between literacy, numeracy and monthly gross earnings of full-time employed workers. We use data from the ALWA survey, augmented by test scores on basic cognitive skills as well as...

In 2005 China provided duty-free access to 190 items from 25 least developed sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Three years later duty-free access was extended to 454 items from 31 SSA LDCs. We find no evidence that China's preferential market access program for the least developed sub-Saharan...

Since China promulgated new minimum wage regulations in 2004, the magnitude and frequency of changes in the minimum wage have been substantial, both over time and across jurisdictions. This paper uses county-level minimum wage panel data and a longitudinal household survey from 16 representative...

Earnings inequality and earnings determination in urban China 2002 and Russia 2003 are compared using samples covering large parts of the two countries. The results from estimated earnings functions are put in perspective of the outcome from a similar comparison made at the end of the 1980s. We...

As China moves into the ranks of aged societies, coresidency of elders with their adult children has become an increasingly important policy concern. This article utilizes data from the 2000 Population Census of China and the 2011 Chinese Household Ethnicity Survey (CHES) to analyze coresidency...

We conduct an experimental study to investigate the causal impact of social identity on individuals' response to economic incentives. We focus on China's household registration (hukou) system which favors urban residents and discriminates against rural residents in resource allocation. Our...