As the most populous economy in the world, China has experienced an unprecedented pace of urbanization since the start of its economic reforms in the late 1970s. The rapid urbanization was accompanied by large flows of rural to urban migration and a growing demand for a clearer specification of the rural land ownership. Since the 2000s, when the conventional restrictions on rural to urban migra...

Key Data Findings. (1) The average rural Medicare Advantage (MA) plan enrollee in 2012 experienced a quality rating of 3.60 stars (of a potential 5.0), compared with a rating of 3.71 stars experienced by urban enrollees. (2) The measured rural-urban difference in the MA plan quality is a result of the difference in the composition of the enrollment and plan availability in MA markets, rather th...

Under the table or informal payments in several middle and low income countries is a serious impediment to health care reform. These payments are effectively a form of systemic corruption. This report shows the efforts of a patient who seek health care for his ankle while being requested to pay under the table in hospital and private clinic. The data were collected by interview and surveying pa...

Can e-governance reforms that reduce advance funds available to local administrators enhance accountability and reduce the leakage of public funds? We investigate this question via a large field experiment and the nationwide scale-up of a financial reform to India’s employment guarantee program. The reform replaced advance payments, authorized by intermediate administrative tiers, with direct i...

background: informal payments in the health sector of many developing countries are considered as a major impediment to health care reforms. informal payments are a form of systemic fraud and have adverse effects on the performance of the health system. in this study, the frequency and extent of informal payments as well as the determinants of these payments were investigated in general hospita...

The check clearing and electronic payments systems market are regulated and dominated to various degrees by the Federal Reserve System. This article examines the theoretical and empirical implications of a potential deregulation of this market within the context of three broad effects: price discrimination, network externalities, and anticompetitive pricing. While these are all legitimate conce...

The customer information system (CIS) is a vital component of the meter-to-cash (M2C) value chain for electric utilities and other industries that provide metered delivery of commodities such as water and natural gas. It is the glue that binds the consumption and metering process to payments, collections and other downstream processes that affect a company’s top line. Yet CIS transformations ca...

Rural Realities is published by the Rural Sociological Society, Brigham Young University, 2019 JFSB, Provo, Utah 84602 [email protected] http://www.ruralsociology.org • The farm bill creates dual incentives for both crop production and conservation. Frequently, these two goals pull in opposite directions; subsidies lead farmers to focus on crops that depend heavily on water, contribute to...

This annotated bibliography summarizes studies of the rural economic development implications of highway investment. Primary emphasis is on research dealing with rural areas, but some urban studies are also cited. Topics covered include the aggregate economic effects of highway investment, the effects of highway investment on business location decisions and employment expansion, the effects of ...