This paper has two main goals. The first is to provide a framework for studying children well being utilising a capability approach. A list of capabilities for children in developing countries is drawn and its methodological justification is provided. The second aim is to suggest an econometric model to estimate child well being, utilising the list of capabilities provided in the first part of ...

Following the 2008/9 financial crisis, China instituted a 4 trillion RMB stimulus package that was spent mostly on infrastructure, with a particular impact at local level. The goal was to sustain economic growth and preserve social stability. We use the Asian Barometer surveys from shortly before and after the stimulus to examine its impact on public trust in government, and find a reversal of ...

Household survey data from the Kyrgyz Republic are used to analyse changes in the determinants of household expenditure during the transition from central planning. Quantile regression is applied to a human capital model with consumption related to the household head’s education and controlled for demographic and locational variables. Education, region, ethnicity and family size are all signifi...

This study aims to explore whether college and family social capital influences the job selection of college students. When demographic variables such as gender and college type are controlled for, logistic regression of 2,145 college students shows that only college social capital, such as peer friendship (β = .160), extracurricular activities (β = .096), and academic advisors counseling (β = ...

Analysing survey data from 32 selected cities across China in 2003, this paper examines parents’ expenditure on their children’s education from two aspects: factors affecting domestic education expenditure and factors affecting expenditure on overseas education. The main findings that emerge from this study are as follows. First, household income has significant effects on the magnitude of the ...

Intergenerational Wealth Mobility in Rural Bangladesh Unique residential history data with retrospective information on parental assets are used to study household wealth mobility in 141 villages in rural Bangladesh. Regression estimates of father-son correlations and analyses of intergenerational transition matrices show substantial persistence in wealth even when we correct for measurement er...

Corruption, Shadow Economy and Income Inequality: Evidence from Asia A number of recent studies for Latin America show that as the size of the informal economy grows, corruption is less harmful to inequality. We investigate if this relationship is equally compelling for developing countries in Asia where corruption, inequality and shadow economies are considerably large. We use Panel Least Squa...

This paper aims to examine the impacts of oil-price shocks on China’s price levels. To that end, we develop a partial transmission input-output model that captures the uniqueness of the Chinese market. We hypothesize and simulate price control, market factors and technology substitution the three main factors that restrict the functioning of a price pass-through mechanism during oil-price shock...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between economic growth and industrial pollution emissions in China using data for 112 major cities between 2001 and 2004. Using disaggregated data we separate FDI inflows from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan from those of other foreign economies. We examine four industrial water pollution indicators (wastewater, chemical oxygen demand, hexavalent chrom...

The millions of deaths that occurred during China’s great famine of 1959-1961 represent one of the world’s greatest civil demographic disasters. Two primary hypotheses have been advanced to explain the famine. One is that China experienced three consecutive years of bad weather while the other is that national policies were wrong in that they reduced and misallocated agricultural production. Th...