This study investigates the relationship between parental schooling on the one hand, and child health outcomes (height and weight) and parental health-seeking behaviour (immunisation status of children), on the other.  While establishing a correlational link between parental schooling and child...

Using new and unique panel data, we investigate the role of long-term health and childhood malnutrition in schooling outcomes for children in rural India, many of whom lack basic numeracy and literacy skills.  Using data on students' performance on mathematics and Hindi tests, we examine the...

A specially designed household survey for rural China is used to analyse the determinants of aspirations for income, proxied by reported minimum income need, and the determinants of subjective well-being, both satisfaction with life and satisfaction with income.  It is found that aspiration...

The paper uses an appropriate survey from rural China to answer the question: Is happiness infectious, i.e. does the happiness of an individual depend positively on the happiness of their reference group?  The evidence is consistent with this hypothesis, but the challenge is to solve the...

In China urban residents have traditionally been protected against labour market competition from rural-urban migrants. Over the period of urban economic reform, rural-urban migration was allowed to increase in order to fill the employment gap as growth of labour demand outstripped that of the...

China's economy grew at an average annual real growth rate of 9 percent over the last three decades.  Despite the vast empirical literature on testing the neoclassical model of economic growth using data on various groups of countries, very few cross-country regressions include China and none...

A national household survey for 2002, containing a specially designed module on subjective well-being, is used to estimate pioneering happiness functions in rural China. The variables predicted by economic theory to be important for happiness are relatively unimportant. The analysis suggests...

We use a panel of over 120,000 Chinese firms of different ownership types over the period 2000-2007 to analyze the linkages between investment in fixed and working capital and financing constraints.  We find that those firms characterized by high working capital display high sensitivities of...

This paper addresses the hotly-debated question: do Chinese firms overinvest?  A firm-level dataset of 100,000 firms over the period of 2000-07 is employed for this purpose.  We initially calculate measures of investment efficiency, which is typically negatively associated with...

This paper attempts to address a puzzle in China's investment pattern: despite high aggregate investment and remarkable economic growth, negative net investment is commonly found at the microeconomic level.  Using a large firm-level dataset, we test three hypotheses to explain the existence and...