Online information technologies are becoming essential tools for urban planning as they support information sharing and participatory decision making in the planning process. Therefore this paper underlines the importance of online planning and e-participation, examines household use of information technology, and discusses the digital divide problem. This paper also explores Australian local g...

This paper examines the sources of earnings disparities between rural migrants and local workers in urban China’s labor markets, with special attention to the role played by the household registration (hukou) status in occupational segregation. Using data from the population mini-census of China in 2005, we show that rural migrants’ earnings disadvantages are largely attributable to occupationa...

We develop a multi-sector model of labor markets in developing countries in which workers can be in any of four states i) employed in the formal urban sector, ii) employed in the informal urban sector, iii) unemployed in the urban sector or, iv) employed in agriculture. Workers differ in the productivity of formal sector employment and there are floor wages below which firms can’t set wages. Mi...

This paper uses political reservations for women in India to study the impact of women’s leadership on policy decisions. Since the mid 1990’s, one third of Village Council head positions in India have been randomly reserved for a woman: In these councils only women could be elected to the position of head. Village Councils are responsible for the provision of many local public goods in rural ar...

In vast markets of developing economies, especially in South Asia, both seasonal rural migrants and threatened urban workers constitute a bulk of the new class of working poor and are truly marginal in terms of their socio-economic status. We argue that gift-giving and gift exchanges in labour markets can perpetuate both rural and urban poverty among the working poor. In the context of working ...

BACKGROUND South Africa is currently undergoing major health system restructuring in an attempt to improve health outcomes and reduce inequities in access. Such inequities exist between private and public health care and within the public health system itself. Experience shows that rural health care can be disadvantaged in policy formulation despite good intentions. The objective of this study ...