This paper employs the Ordinary Least Squares, Instrumental Variables and Treatment Effect models to a new dataset from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) to estimate return to the four-year university education in 2008. Our estimates reveal that the return to university...

Economic transition lowered happiness on average, but did not affect all equally. This paper uses Hungarian survey data to study the impact of religion and economic transition on happiness. Religious involvement contributes positively to individuals¿ self-reported well-being. Controlling for...

This paper aims to test empirically if certain frequently used measures of well-being, which are regarded as valuable properties of human life, are actually desired by people. In other words, it investigates whether the “expert judgments” in social science overlap with social consensus on...

Urban land expansion in China has attracted considerable scholarly attention. However, more work is needed to apply spatial modeling to understanding the mechanisms of urban growth from both institutional and physical perspectives. This paper analyzes urban expansion in Shanghai and its...

This study investigates the allocation of China's R&D subsidies and its effectiveness in stimulating firms' own R&D investments for the population of Chinese listed firms throughout the time period 2001 to 2006. For allocation, we find that firm participation is determined by prior grants, high...

This paper argues that the accession to the European Union improves the quality of competition policy via the implementation of pro-competitive policies, especially antitrust and competition policies, embedded in the Community Acquis. We assess this conjecture empirically for the (former)...

This paper provides a theory to explain the paradoxical features of the great housing boom in China —the persistently faster-than-GDP housing price growth, exceptionally high capital returns, and excessive vacancy rates. The expectation that high capital returns driven mainly by resource...

Using cross-country regressions, we examine the relationship between “point-source” resource abundance and economic growth, quality of institutions, investment in human and physical capital, and social welfare (life expectancy and infant mortality) for all countries and for the economies in...

Youth unemployment and in particular long-term youth unemployment in Bulgaria is much higher than the EU average. Low flows out of unemployment into a job, especially for the least educated and qualified young people residing in peripheral regions, are the principal source of long-term...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of Chinese government financial incentives on firms’ innovation performance during the nation's initial economic transition period in the mid-1990s. Through a large-scale empirical survey of more than 1000 Chinese manufacturing firms, the...