This paper uses a case study of the evolution of education and healthcare provision in Yantian Village, Guangdong Province to examine broader trends in China’s evolving social policies. It makes no claims that development in Yantian is typical for rural China but it may allow some...

Why do Arab states lag behind the rest of the world in gender equality? Social structural, cultural, and institutional accounts offer alternative perspectives. This study critiques the ‘petroleum patriarchy’ thesis, presented in Michael Ross’s “Oil, Islam and Womenâ€...

A new technique for estimating countries’ de facto exchange rate regimes synthesizes two approaches. One approach estimates the implicit de facto basket weights in an OLS regression of the local currency value rate against major currency values. Here the hypothesis is a basket peg with...

Fiscal and monetary policy each has a role to play in mitigating the volatility that stems from the large trade shocks hitting commodity-exporting countries. All too often macroeconomic policy is procyclical, that is, destabilizing, rather than countercyclical. This paper suggests two...

Are China’s citizens sufficiently satisfied to reduce potential challenges to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule? It is reasonable to assume that if a significant percentage of citizens are more satisfied with government performance and the provision of public goods, the government...

Developing countries traditionally experience pass-through of exchange rate changes that is greater and more rapid than high-income countries experience. This is true equally of the determination of prices of imported goods, prices of local competitors’ products, and the general CPI. But...

Federal action addressing climate change is likely to emerge either through new legislation or via the U.S. EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act. The prospect of federal action raises important questions regarding the interconnections between federal efforts and state-level climate...

I published The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions thirty-two years ago, in 1978. Given the furor and controversy over the book immediately following its publication, I did not anticipate that it would go on to become a classic. Indeed, the book’s...

We describe the pension plan features of the states and the largest cities and counties in the U.S. Unlike in the private sector, defined benefit (DB) pensions are still the norm in the public sector. However, a few jurisdictions have shifted toward defined contribution (DC) plans as their...

Using the most comprehensive data file ever compiled on air pollution, water pollution, environmental regulations, and infant mortality from a developing country, the paper examines the effectiveness of India’s environmental regulations. The air pollution regulations were effective at...