Rapid growth in a number of East Asian economies over the last three decades has been facilitated by an effective strategy of human resource development. The principal element of this strategy has been to provide basic education and health to a wider segment of society. This strategy helped...

Summary We utilize household-level consumption expenditure data from India to examine the evolution of inequality during 1983-2004. Various measures of inequality show that inequality levels were relatively stable during 1983-93, but increased during 1993-2004. The increases in inequality have...

Analysis of labor force survey data from 1994 to 2007 reveals that the structure of the Philippines labor force has been changing in several important ways. One is the movement from self-employment, the most predominant form of employment, to wage employment across a wide range of production...

We use village level data from the 1991 and 2001 Indian Censuses to examine how the availability of health facilities and safe drinking water at the village level affect juvenile sex ratios. In addition to controlling for village fixed effects in our estimating equation of the juvenile sex...

Using industry-level data disaggregated by states, this paper finds a positive impact of trade liberalization on (the absolute values of) labor demand elasticities in the Indian manufacturing sector. The magnitudes of these elasticities turn out to be negatively related to protection levels that...

India has undertaken extensive reforms in its manufacturing sector over the last two decades. However, an acceleration of growth in manufacturing, and a corresponding increase in employment, has eluded India. Why have the reforms not produced the intended results? Using Annual Survey of...

This paper finds a positive impact of trade liberalization on labor-demand elasticities in the Indian manufacturing sector using industry-level data disaggregated by states. These elasticities turn out to be negatively related to protection levels that vary across industries and over time....

This paper examines the effects of openness and labor market rigidity on labor market outcomes in the manufacturing sector using panel data from 48 developing countries. Results from reduced form equations for employment and wages suggest hat on average trade liberalization has had a weak impact...

We combine labor force survey data with trade and production data to examine the impact of trade on wages and employment in the Philippines' manufacturing section. Our main finding are as follows. First, in contrast to findings typically reported for Latin American countries, our data indicate...

This paper explores the empirical relationship between poverty and economic freedom. In doing so, it estimates the levels of absolute poverty for a panel of over forty developing countries and then utilizes fixed effects and GMM-IV estimators to derive the empirical relationships. The principal...