In nationally representative household data from the 2008 wave of the Rural to Urban Migration in China survey, nearly two thirds of rural-urban migrants found their employment through family members, relatives, friends or acquaintances. This paper investigates why the use of social network to...

This paper examines the relationship between poverty and education in Uganda in the 1990s. It shows how growth in living standards and poverty reduction during that period was fastest for more educated households. Income growth at the household level is disaggregated into earnings growth from...

How rapidly will child malnutrition respond to GNP growth? This study explores that question using household data from twelve countries. In addition, data on the malnutrition rates since the 1970s available from a cross section of countries are employed in this investigation. Both forms of...

The rapid growth of informal employment in China in recent decades has attracted attention, but to understand its implications, the concept of informality must be deconstructed. We reclassify employment status into three categories: salaried workers who have long-term contracts; the self-employed;...

This paper investigates gender inequality of academic achievement using mean and quantile decomposition analysis in eight selected MENA countries. We use data from TIMSS 2007 to decompose the test scores gap between boys and girls at the eighth grade. There is a mixed picture of gender...

This study examines the determinants of educational outcome in eight selected MENA countries. The complicated structure of the TIMSS data has been considered carefully during all the stages of the analysis employing plausible values and jackknife standard error technique to accommodate the...

This paper examines change in wage gaps in urban China by estimating quantile regressions on CHIPS data. It applies the Machado and Mata (2005) decomposition, finding sharp increases in inequality from 1988 to 1995 and from 2002 to 2008 largely due to changes in the wage structure. The analysis...

We investigate adaptation of subjective well-being using a randomised controlled trial. We find that providing medical equipment to a random sample of Ugandan adults with lower limb disabilities has a positive effect on their physical health, using both objective and self-reported measures....

We use Synthetic Control Methodology to estimate the output loss in Tunisia as a result of the "Arab spring". Our results suggest that each Tunisian citizen lost, on average, an estimated US$ 600 (5.5 percent of GDP), US$ 574 (5.1 percent of GDP) and US$ 735 (6.4 percent of GDP) in 2011, 2012...