Many countries around the world commit themselves to providing their citizens with equal access to educational opportunities and an even distribution of educational resources through different policies and measures. The policy initiated by China in the late 1990s to expand college and university...

Drawing on field research and statistical data, this article is an original contribution to the understanding of the public sector “equal pay” policy and, more broadly, income distribution in China. The making and development of the equal pay policy epitomize the complexity and challenges in...

As agents of the state, civil servants play a central role in public governance and socioeconomic development. In developing countries, an effective civil service pay system may provide strong incentives for better public service and rein in corruption, whereas poor remuneration can fuel...

China's urbanization is significant world-wide. This process is characterized by under-urbanization of population and fast urban land expansion. The driving forces behind this expansion and their rationale are not fully understood and empirically tested. This study fills this gap by analyzing...

The drivers of public support for redistributive policy have stimulated academic debate around the world. The majority of studies use cross-country surveys conducted in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries to contribute to the debate on whether self-interest or...

Decentralised economic development initiatives empowering local governments have gained currency in both developed and developing contexts. The empowerment of county governments in China is a case in point. This study uses difference-in-differences (DID) and the fixed-effects model with panel...

Without election or re-election motivations, what factors have impacted public goods preferences in an authoritarian country such as China? More specifically, what makes political elites be devoted to or not be devoted to local public goods provision? This study, using basic education provision...

The extent to which social protection programmes in general, and targeted programmes in particular, actually alleviate poverty has been a central issue in development debates for decades. The objective of this article is to contribute to the debate by empirically examining the...

There has been a growing interest in investigating the impact of Chinese-style fiscal decentralization in recent years. Some speculate that fiscal decentralization in China has led to the country's phenomenal economic growth. Chinese-style fiscal decentralization has evolved greatly over the...

Using a nationwide county-level panel dataset for the years 1995-2009, this paper conducts the first analysis in the literature to examine the impacts of fiscal decentralization and fiscal equalization, both measured at the sub-provincial level, on intra-provincial inequality in China. While...