Township Village Enterprises (TVEs) have essentially contributed to China's economic development and institutional transformation over the last twenty years. One of the explanations for the mechanism of TVEs' growth is the co-operative culture theory which claims that Chinese - compared with...

Children have always been part of the economic life of societies. Historical evidence indicates that the contribution of children to family income in cash or in kind has been consistently significant. Currently, the issue of child labor has become an important global development issue in...

This paper addresses the issue of regionalism - as a form of identity and political mobilization - in the multiethnic northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, which has until today been spared of inter-ethnic violence that has characterized all other constitutive regions of the former socialist...

Numerous publications about disasters are implying that disaster vulnerability is growing. The main reasons given for this are growing populations, climate change and increasing poverty. However, maybe the current perception of vulnerability to disasters rests primarily on a perspective focusing...

Ghana has a relatively good international reputation with respect to political stability and macroeconomic reforms. However, its success with developing the private sector and attracting investment has at best been mixed. Therefore the new government that came into power in 2001 proclaimed a...

The armed conflict over economic and political power in Colombia has led to the massive displacement of people living in the areas of violence. The design of appropriate policies of prevention, assistance, and resettlement requires improved information on the determinants and effects of...

A large proportion of internationally traded goods are subject to labor standards and this proportion is on a continuing rise. Such developments created a hot debate about the impact of labor standards on trade, but there has been no clear international consensus on the net costs and benefits...

A new general-equilibrium model that links together rural-to-urban migration, the externality effect of the average level of human capital, and agglomeration economies shows that in developing countries, unrestricted rural-to-urban migration reduces the average income of both rural and urban...

This paper has been written to make an enormous threat known to the public. We all know about the forest fires that raged in Indonesia and parts of Malaysia in 1997, and about the noxious haze covering the whole region, but only a few experts are aware of the threat of extinction of the last...

When productivity is fostered by both the individual's human capital and by the average level of human capital in the economy, individuals under-invest in human capital. A strictly positive probability of migration to a richer country, by raising both the level of human capital formed by...