China appears to have successfully weathered the worst impact of both the Asian Financial Crisis (1997-98) and the Global Financial Crisis (2008-2009). Chinese leaders did respond quickly, and on occasion massively, to the challenge of external crisis. In retrospect, however, each crisis...

The stability of market economy is defined and stability conditions deduced which do not appear to restrict preferences in any significant manner. This assumes importance when considering economies where diversity among agents is known to exist. It is shown that if a condition on the rank of the...

In this paper, we investigate the role of a School Management Committee (COGES) in facili- tating social capital among community members and teachers. We employ unique data from Burkina Faso, where the COGES project was recently introduced. To determine the individual level of social capital of...

This paper explores the extensification and intensification process of rice production in Mozambique’s dominant rice ecology, i.e., rainfed lowland area. Our household-level data show that the potential of extensification is not fully exploited, as only 41% of the cultivable lowland is used...

This study uses a unique long panel dataset from Sri Lanka to examine the mechanism of social capital formation in an imperfect credit market. The authors show that households in the face of credit constraints reduce the time allocation for social capital investment, such as participation in...

Using an extensive household-level data set collected in Tanzania, this paper investigates the determinants of technology adoption in rice cultivation by focusing on the role of credit. We find that credit enhances fertilizer use and the adoption of labor-intensive agronomic practices such as...

What is the impact of export costs on the speed and extent to which African firms exports? We answer this question using a sample of 49,584 (mostly formal) firms across 71 countries, including 5,839 firms in 16 African countries surveyed by the World Bank during 2002 and 2003. We find that firms...

This study estimates the effect of farmer field schools in rural Ethiopia on income from agriculture. The farmer field schools were established in association with participatory forest management associations for forest protection funded by Japanese aid. We employ a difference-in-differences...

Most of the reports on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) released by the multilateral development organizations and other agencies focus either on a single goal or on a few goals and examine global/regional trends or cross-country differences. There are few comprehensive cross-country...

Taiwan was one of the few Asian economies that had emerged from the 1997-1998 East Asian financial crisis relatively unscathed. During the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, the island’s shock-absorbing capability turned out to be once more quite respectable. Taiwan inherited a relatively...