"It has been argued in the literature that China is underurbanized in large part because of restrictions on migration. While the presence of migration barriers can help explain why existing cities fail to achieve their optimal size, it cannot explain the lack of cities. Although migration has...

China's rise as an economic powerhouse raises a number of questions that are the subject of lively debate. How did the country do it? How applicable are the lessons of China's economic reform of the past thirty years to the challenges it faces in the next three decades? What does the detailed...

Since the early nineties, tens of thousands of villages have held elections of their leaders in rural China. Using a recent village survey, this paper empirically examines the impact of election on public goods provision to the rural community. We found that elected officials tend to tax less on...

The objective of this paper is to analyze how agricultural research and development have affected urban poverty using China as an example. Agricultural research lower food prices, and therefore help urban poor by lowing their food cost.

China’s spectacular growth and poverty reduction has been accompanied by growing inequality which threatens the social compact and thus the political basis for economic growth and social development. The regional dimension of inequality— rural/urban, inland/coastal and provincial—dominates...

This study uses a panel data set of 25 years over 280 districts in rural India and applies a geographic information systems (GIS) program to investigate the regional neighborhood effect on the rate of diffusion of new technologies. The results show that in the technology diffusion process, the...

This paper aims to quantify the driving forces behind the observed divergence of Indian economy. The results show that in a closed economy with agriculture as the predominant mode of production, the comparative advantage is mainly determined by the difference in land quality and climate across...

This paper develops a framework to measure the impact of agricultural research on urban poverty. Increased investments in agricultural R&D can lower food prices by increasing food production, and lower food prices benefit the urban poor because they often spend more than 60% of their income on...