This paper explores the urban-rural welfare gap in 2002 and 2009/10 for the case of Sri Lanka. This was a period of high growth and falling poverty rates in the country. The paper attempts to explore three issues: (a) what are the determinants of urban and rural household welfare, (b) does the...

This paper explores the rates of return to education in Sri Lanka across the sexes and different types of employment during 2009/10. The endogeneity bias suggests that education may be associated with other characteristics such as ability and family background - excluding such attributes could...

This paper attempts to examine the labour force participation decisions and earnings across employment sectors and how it varies by gender in Sri Lanka. The labour market is disaggregated into 5 sectors - public, formal private, informal private, self-employed and agriculture. Using the Labour...

This paper estimates trends in absolute poverty in urban China from 1988 to 2002 using the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) surveys. Poverty incidence curves are plotted, showing that poverty has fallen markedly during the period regardless of the exact location of the poverty line...

We expand Hanushek and Kimko’s (2000) analysis of the relationship between schooling quality, as measured by scores in international tests, and growth. We take account of another fifteen years of growth and approximately twice as many test score results. We treat the data first as a panel,...

This paper examines the effects of state sector domination on wage inequality in urban China. Using Chinese Household Income Project surveys, we conduct two exercises: with quantile regression analysis, we identify wage gaps across the distribution and over time; and we employ the Machado and...